
The memristor—the functional equivalent of a synapse—could revolutionize circuit design - prakash
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/7024
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jderick
Fascinating article. It really gives a great feel for how real breakthroughs
are made. And it shows what kind of environment is necessary:

 _But beyond the comment that “molecular-scale electronics” would be
interesting and that we should try to have something useful in about 10 years,
I was given carte blanche to pursue any topic we wanted. We decided to take on
Moore’s Law._

There aren't many places today where that kind of research is going on. Maybe
successes like this will remind some of those in a position to make a
difference what kind of commitment is required to discover truly revolutionary
ideas.

~~~
nihilocrat
You see the same sort of environment revealed in the "good old days at Bell
Labs" that was posted a few days ago.

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coliveira
This is a fantastic example of exposition. I don't know anything about
nanotechnology, but the author made it easy to follow the explanation.

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davi
Early in the article:

"[Chua] proved that memristor behavior could not be duplicated by any circuit
built using only the other three elements, which is why the memristor is truly
fundamental."

Later in the article:

"Emulating the behavior of a single memristor, Chua showed, requires a circuit
with at least 15 transistors and other passive elements."

Reconciliation?

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likpok
The three elements are the capacitor, inductor and resistor.

I think when they say "fundamental elements" they mean the fundamental passive
elements of analog circuit theory (mentioned above), as opposed to active
elements like op-amps or transistors.

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tedshroyer
Exactly, it says that at the top of the paragraph.

"For nearly 150 years, the known fundamental passive circuit elements were
limited to the capacitor (discovered in 1745), the resistor (1827), and the
inductor (1831)... He proved that memristor behavior could not be duplicated
by any circuit built using only the other three elements, which is why the
memristor is truly fundamental. "

~~~
davi
Thanks, think I got it -- the passive elements can't duplicate a memristor,
but transistors plus some passive elements can.

~~~
michaelneale
ok so the reverse is interesting - the memristor can presumably do what those
"active + passive" components could have, but cheaper/smaller/faster better
etc? Did I get it right?

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likpok
Yes. At the moment, only smaller (the devices operate at ~1 Hz but may
improve). The end hope is for very high density RAM or solid state memory
(depending on how fast it ends up compared to SRAM and DRAM and Flash).

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mhb
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388562>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385322>

~~~
davi
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=362005>

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albertcardona
Perhaps, but the claims regarding brain emulation and "thinking" are way off.
To begin with, we don't even know the biological basis of thinking--neurons
firing is something even a slug can do, and has as much to do with thinking as
walls and doors have to do with a research institute.

It's like saying: since we understand gravity now, designing spaceships with
warp drive is just round the corner.

~~~
davi
Yes, calling something "the functional equivalent of the synapse" implies you
know the function of a synapse...

The memristor has some functional properties in common with some synapses.

Neither synapses nor memristors have been fully characterized (though probably
the memristor is better understood at this point).

The function of synapses in memory formation and information processing is
poorly understood, but maybe having a nanoscale electronics component
(memristor) that has some synapse-like attributes will increase the size of
simulations to the degree that they will make interesting, testable
predictions about how neural circuits work.

