[Info-vax] OT: Memristor: Is a sea-change coming?

[Doug Phillips]

The discussions about HP's recent decisions have sparked these
thoughts, but I couldn't find one (newer) thread where this fit so
here you go.

Not that I have a crystal ball, but I sense a technology revolution
and sea-change on the horizon. So far, since the numeric control and
programmable logic revolution, advances in computing have been
evolutionary: smaller, cheaper, faster, more powerful ways of doing
the same things.

HP has been pretty quiet since 2010 about their memristor work. For
those unfamiliar, read:

 < http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/apr-jun/memristor.html >

A speculative blog article from early 2010 is an interesting read:

< http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/5/how-will-memristors-change-everything.html
>
 if wrapped, < http://preview.tinyurl.com/2awdpux >

Its author poses the question:
##
"How will we design systems when we have access to a new material that
is two orders of magnitude more efficient from a power perspective
than traditional transistor technologies, contains multiple petabits
(1 petabit = 128TB) of persistent storage, and can be reconfigured to
be either memory or CPU in a package as small as a sugar cube (in a
stacked configuration)?"
##

Note that any "bit" can used as either logic or memory dynamically, as
needed. And, unlike a transistor, one memristor can store not just one
bit but any one of a range of values. The implications are mind-
numbing (to me, at least).

One 2011 article from physicsorg.com shows some research that has
definite Star Trek implications.

 < http://preview.tinyurl.com/3u7j6u6 >

HP has been quiet. I wonder what's happening that we don't know about,
but which could possibly be driving some of HP's seemingly "strange"
business decisions?

Just thinking.