Memristor man says the computer age is yet to begin
"SCIENCE AND technology are still in their infancy, no matter how many times somebody comes along and says it's the end of science," says Stan Williams. "There is far more out there than we have yet found."
Williams is talking after several weeks of sudden media attention and more than ten years of effort since founding the lab he directs at HP, the information and quantum systems lab. The reason for the attention: Williams and his team have found the missing fourth element of circuit design, the memristor, which was originally predicted in a paper written by Leon Chua in 1971.
The story started, says Williams, with a year or more of thinking when they founded the lab: what would computing look like in 2010? Transistors would be getting smaller, to the point where the size of individual atoms would make a difference.
"That got our attention, and we started thinking very carefully about what that means. What would be the impact of electronic devices so small that one atom more or less could make a difference in the properties of the device? That pushed us out of the box in terms of being open to very different things and thinking about very different issues."
As they were investigating molecular electronics, they started seeing hints of an unexpected effect in their experiments. It was, says Williams, a staffer named Greg Snyder who rediscovered, read, and understood Chua's paper. Once Williams had understood it – "Leon Chua is a very modest man, but it's quite heavy mathematically and a challenge to get through" – he made the connection between Chua's work and what they were seeing in the lab. From there, it took them about a year to understand the physics.
"Once we got it, we saw that in fact so much of what we were seeing and so much of what other people had reported in the literature for years and years was actually memristance, but without the physics model they didn’t understand it. The main thing we did is we figured out where it's coming from, why it's important, and why it's becoming more important." The effect, he says, gets stronger as the devices get smaller. "Memristance is not a quantum effect, but it's another effect that becomes more important as things get smaller."
At this year's etech conference, Williams talked about computer science as a series of roads not taken. The path we have followed for the last 50 years, he said, derives from Claude Shannon's observation that series and parallel switches could implement Boolean logic. Go back further and read Bertrand Russell's 1910 Principia Mathematica and you find other forms of logic that could be implemented.
"Memristor essentially enables some of those other tracks," says Williams. " And to me it's the example that there's plenty more room at the bottom."
Besides implementing other forms of logic, Williams believes that the key characteristics of memristors – that they retain their memory even when powered off, like a hard drive or ROM, but can be rewritten dynamically, like RAM – will enable far more energy-efficient designs and continue the functional progression of Moore's Law. He imagines a future of hybrid circuits, but also thinks that memristors will function not just as digital switches but as electronic synapses far more like their biological counterparts than those built with traditional semiconducts – and far smaller and less power-hungry.
A "thinking brain", he says, is "very, very far out". But the analogue computers to be built with these devices would actually learn from their environment and be more competent at human-style pattern recognition, so difficult for today's digital computers.
"The age of computing has not yet begun," he says. "What we have now makes the computers that existed 50 years ago look like toys – and not very good ones. My view is that what we'll have in 50 years will make what we have now look very quaint and toylike." But, he adds, "Even after 50 years we won't have anything that loooks remotely like a human brain." µ
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You would think HP could have warned me before buying their branded laptop with Vista SP1 that it wasn't really a computer after all.
In 1971 I was being Drafted by US Army. Memreistors were also Big. You can Play it Again Sam, as it turns Out. I had already served on several US bases, so my memory, backed up by Hard Dod paperwork saved my Bogus Ass. Haha.

However, latter in Year while exploring Calculator, as paperwork always leads somewhere, we: Capt Redmound & Northrup, watched huge transistors fire blazing sequences & thought Ah....Preparing to digitalize Clearance codes for US Airports. Memristor was NOT Much of concern. 
Basicly what I can remember, if you make circle smaller, there is less % inside for amount of area of circles' outside edge. Thus less unstability.

Its basis for reduction of scale. Timex sinclair was just coming on. So between Mainframe, Timex Sinclair & 4004, Basement was empty lot, as public cashed up. 
Here Public is still being whooped. Admiral Grace WHooper (ex parte' el bogus) was coming in & out scene like penquin gone Mad. They planned fortran as 100 Year Event, So B.A.S.I.C. wasn't appreciated, even by Spy.

Yet, here writer is trying to confuse Lack of Credible Software 50 years ago, in Famous Admirals day; to todays software- as Hardware Advancement. 
Of course, two are completely seperate. Advanceing Software is Unique & will continue forever, with or without Memristor, Mostly Without, as its just vague theory. Transistors can only go so small.

When Beggers Ride, memristors will Meter fare. Just quit reading that Sci fi & realize that -4 + -4 = -8. That Admiral, if i can call Sheesh that, followed me for decades, Memristors followed entire Scientific community also, yet both are bogus & memristors, Moreso.
Drashek
Wha?
Ultie clearly talks a language that google could not translate, stunned....

But, stoked with Memristor and the understanding there of. It's like being at the dawn of a new era of science, almost like when radio waves were discovered opening up so many possiblilties. 

Anyway, it's just glad to be around during a major advancement like this, weather some readers tend to think it's significant or not...
Anyone else not understand a damn thing he said?
did he really say 'loooks'? was he german?
Drashek is a bot, you idiots... He's not human...

How long will it take for you people to realise this?
Here is my best guess/translation as to the meaning of that strange comment:

"In 1971 I was being Drafted by US Army. Memreistors were also Big. You can Play it Again Sam, as it turns Out."

Memristors were big back in 1971 when I was being drafted by the U.S. Army, so this is just a return of an old idea.

"I had already served on several US bases, so my memory, backed up by Hard Dod paperwork saved my Bogus Ass. Haha."

I was able to avoid going to the front lines because I had prior service working with the DOD and could prove it. 

"However, latter in Year while exploring Calculator, as paperwork always leads somewhere, we: Capt Redmound & Northrup, watched huge transistors fire blazing sequences & thought Ah....Preparing to digitalize Clearance codes for US Airports. Memristor was NOT Much of concern."

While working with electronic calculators, as part of my tour of duty, myself and my associates were more impressed by the speed of transistor based computation, rather than some theoretical memristor, and were excited by the application of transistor technology to help automate U.S. airport clearance codes. 

"Basicly what I can remember, if you make circle smaller, there is less % inside for amount of area of circles' outside edge. Thus less unstability. Its basis for reduction of scale. "

I seem to recall that as the circumference of a circle shrinks the circle's area shrinks at a faster rate, which is why reduction of scale is so fruitful, and with less area comes less instability.

"Timex sinclair was just coming on. So between Mainframe, Timex Sinclair & 4004, Basement was empty lot, as public cashed up."

Scale was reducing so quickly, between mainframe, Timex Sinclair & 4004, that the server rooms in the basements of most IT departments were using a lot less space as people upgraded.

"Here Public is still being whooped. Admiral Grace WHooper (ex parte' el bogus) was coming in & out scene like penquin gone Mad. They planned fortran as 100 Year Event, So B.A.S.I.C. wasn't appreciated, even by Spy."

Memreistors, and the idea that they will be the foundation of a new computer age, are just media hype. That prediction reminds me of how Admiral Grace Hopper sold everyone on the idea that Fortran was going to be the leading programming language for the next 100 years to the point that other programming languages were ignored, even by spies.

"Yet, here writer is trying to confuse Lack of Credible Software 50 years ago, in Famous Admirals day; to todays software- as Hardware Advancement."

It sounds like the writer is confusing hardware implementations of basic logic gates, and their improvements with software capabilities.

"Of course, two are completely seperate. Advanceing Software is Unique & will continue forever, with or without Memristor, Mostly Without, as its just vague theory. Transistors can only go so small."

Of course the ability of software to improve and to model multiple forms of logic will not be affected my the addition of the memristor. It is irrelevant to hardware as well, even with their addition the end of scale reduction will still happen.

"When Beggers Ride, memristors will Meter fare."

Memristors are basically useless.

"Just quit reading that Sci fi & realize that -4 + -4 = -8."

Stop buying into the latest hype.

"That Admiral, if i can call Sheesh that, followed me for decades, Memristors followed entire Scientific community also, yet both are bogus & memristors, Moreso."

Just as the Admiral was able to offer me a false vision of the future for decades, memristors are offering a false vision to the whole scientific community. Both predictions were false, but with memristors it is even more obvious.
Ultie: Contender for a "word salad" award - or - why we humans are lucky we can't read each other's minds ....
For another take on the memristor, I've written a (not real good) short story on it. I think I'll add a link to this post somewhere near the top of it. It's called <a href="http://spacecollective.org/meika/3836/Carry-Me-Home">Carry Me Home</a>.