A computer memory chip that could make computers faster, more powerful and efficient has been showcased by research at Hewlett Packard (HP). The devices were built with memristors, which are electronic elements that can be used to crunch data and build more advanced chips. Their unique properties include the ability to store and process data at the same time, in the same devices thus placing them in a good position to replace transistors which are currently used to build chips today.
Memristors can be stacked together for greater compression and researchers claim that it would offer 10 times more storage and processing power than current chip architectures. By combining the functions of both the processor and memory, memristors have the potential of making data computation faster and conserving energy. Such is the potential of the memristor that some researchers are already predicting they can be used to create real brain-like computers.
Although proposed by Professor Chua in 1971, a working memristor was only built about forty years later by Dr Stan Williams (of HP) and his team. The tiny devices, which are described as the “fourth” basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors, has been predicted to be on the market by 2013 in smaller digital devices such as iPods and cameras.
The HP work is published in the Nature journal .
Talking Point
Do you have any other predictions for the future computer considering the long-term potential of memristors?
12 Comments
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CouponWebz
April 15, 2010 at 4:59 am
Interesting. So it’s like the processor and storage device combined? if so, then future devices will be even more portable and faster, like thin notebooks that can play the most process-intensive games with graphics maxed out and everything, without stuttering.
Admin
April 15, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Your idea is actually mouth-watering 🙂
Domain name registration
April 15, 2010 at 7:39 am
Nice researchers, technology will continue to improve everyday. If the new device is use in a computer it will be 10 time fast than what we are using now. I am looking forward for the first HP system that will come with this device.
Mark
April 23, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Very interesting. I wonder how much faster it would be. Transistor based memories nowadays are fast enough for me but this innovation is really amazing. Gamers would love to have these types of memory.
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Laptop Price
May 18, 2010 at 7:40 am
wow…i can’t believe Hp is really making it’s way far from the others..a memory chip that has a quality of a processor? awesome..i hope this would be compatible with any king of motherboards?
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Oil Futures Price
June 7, 2010 at 5:25 am
i hope i could avail this chipset..
Austin
June 13, 2010 at 7:50 pm
This is exciting. I can’t wait for 32 and 64gb memory modules. Soon enough, 64 bit will be obsolete.
KVM Switches
July 3, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Wow, it’s fantastic. I am interested to know that how faster it is and from where to get it.
Thanks for this nice post!
building supplies
July 15, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I wonder how much faster it is and how much it would cost. The thing is, it won’t stop will it? You get all amazed by something and then within a year something better, something faster/smaller/more expensive comes along.
Eva Schildersbedrijf
August 2, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Memristors are awesome, I’ve read about them a while back. Everthing could become much better (lower power useage) and faster. I’ts even possible to do computations with them.
Ben Zoyl
May 9, 2011 at 11:12 am
That would be awesome if they can produce sooner laps that can withstand 8-10 hours of heavy tasks… Acer’s right now offer 8 hours of battery life but it is reduced to 4-5 hours when used continuously.
Janis Gagliardi
August 13, 2011 at 3:07 am
To tell you the truth, it’s not really surprising that they come up with faster memory chips. It is expected that any chip or hardware that’s responsible for making a computer device faster will be redesigned to make it go even faster. The same goes for hardware components responsible for storage like the hard drive, etc. Just like what Apple did with the Macbook Air for using an SD card for their storage. It holds more storage space and uses less space. Anything is possible. It’s just a matter of time what improvements they come up with eventually.