

Boise startup offers commercially available memristors? - theresistor
http://www.bioinspired.net/products-1.html

======
theresistor
Website is definitely underwhelming, but there's some documentation that
appears reasonably detailed and plausible:

Data sheet:
[http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/35f756676bf3290bebff9c9ac0f9e3ea?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

User manual:
[http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?Acc...](http://nebula.wsimg.com/6dba75009009af7a59036365876b3f66?AccessKeyId=64577CB1C10F8DCEF8A3&disposition=0&alloworigin=1)

Demo video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wQviPeaNpw)

~~~
theresistor
After a bit more digging, it appears to be a silver chalcogenide memristor, as
described here:
[http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/](http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/electrical_facpubs/73/)

This is very different materially from the TiO2 based ones used in HP-derived
designs, though I'm not sure what differences that will lead to in practice.

~~~
cbennett
TLDR: There is a major mismatch between the device physics of the academic
group and what is being marketed/sold.

If the actual device they were selling represented what they did in this
technical work, I would be very, very excited. The I/V curve looks great.

BUT, compare that figure to the I/V curve represented in the longer datasheet
(linked to in parent comment). A one million fold increase in resistance in
5nS- That isn't analog at all. It could be fairly emulated as almost a flip-
flop with just a few transistors!! Although a binary memristor at scale might
be more interesting as a memory (eg ReRAM), at this scale meant for
neuromorphic analog applications, it becomes utterly uninteresting.

So to be honest I am baffled how they went from such a promising inspiration
to a completely bland packaged device. Two possibiliies come to mind: 'they'
are entirely different groups, or a major mis-marketing is occurring in the
interest of gaining some funds for future R&D.

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shadykiller
What happened to the HP memristor ? Are they going to launch ever ?

~~~
Zuph
HP has put the project on indefinite hiatus. It's probably dead forever.

~~~
tedunangst
It's now... The Machine!
[http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/536786/machine-
dreams/)

The good news is they don't even need to build memristors. Even simulated
memristors are faster than than memory.

"The off-the-shelf, high-powered HP server completed the task in about two
seconds. The simulated Machine needed only 50 milliseconds."

~~~
mesistor
The Machine was canceled in 2015: [http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-
machine-no-memrist...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/hp-the-machine-no-
memristors/)

There is no Machine. There never was any Machine. The Machine is an urban
myth, a grand illusion, something to give your life meaning, but which is in
fact not there.

Someone probably made a nice sum from the temporary stock bump...

~~~
mfisher87
I have a friend in HP who actually had a job on The Machine until the
"hiatus." She got switched to another project when it got put on hold... but
HP was _actually_ assigning human resources to it at one point, not just
making press releases.

------
tjgafron
Hello Everyone. My name is Terry Gafron. I am the CEO of the company in Boise
selling memristors. You all make some very good points. We are a few honest
guys, trying to bring this technology to life. We do sell research grade
memristors. Leon Chua has bought some from us and we are working with him to
refine their characterization. While many of us are from Micron, there was no
IP package from them. We developed this with a local university and are
working very hard on this. We are a bare bones start-up, bootstrapping our way
through this. You are correct in that there are still some discrepancies we
need to resolve, but we are working on this. We have been doing contract work
for DoD for the past few years, developing memristor based processors for
them. We have some significant IC design experience with this sort of thing,
but there is still so much that needs to be done. We sell bare bones devices
we scraped up the cash to build. We do not make colossal claims. Our aim is
simply to drive a stake in the sand. If you have questions, you can always
send me a note at terry.gafron@bioinspired.net. Thanks all!

------
ypcx
Can somebody explain what does this mean for the field of AI (short and longer
term) besides (I guess) the obvious advantage of being able to implement
software algorithms in hardware?

~~~
cbennett
Its not just for the AI field, if you read their About Us page you will see
that a very interesting application has to do with UAV and algorithms for
motion detection. The chip set design space for this is very low energy but
efficient/accurate at a certain trained task, which is what makes bio-inspired
applications so compelling. But going back to AI, I would say this:

Short term: a wide variety of demonstrators of various 'easy' problems, eg
image and simple logic function pattern matching, in chip as opposed to in
theory or software like you say. This can be done with dozens or a few hundred
memristive devices.

Medium term: more interesting (my maybe not trying NP hard problems yet)
application in image, sound processing and other non-linear signal processing
that begin to rival best approaches coming from dozens of GPU cores. Such
applications might require tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
devices. Pattern matching and classifications at this stage might rival that
of a very simple brain or a small component of the neo-cortex.

Longer term: Unknown, but some possibilities when you use tens of millions of
such devices may include full (neo)-cortex implementation in hardware,
remember that an entirely new generation of non-linear algorithms that
implement due to topological and temporal effects at the nano-scale may allow
for better results than what we get given an equivalent number of transistors
(yes, transistors are also nano-devices, but despite a small community working
on sub-threshold switching, they are being used in an almost uniformly binary
approach).

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mangecoeur
with a website like that it looks more like they should be selling "medicinal"
herbs...

~~~
Untit1ed
It reminds me a lot of a box for a GPU or fancy motherboard. The logo even
looks exactly like he kind of one a second-tier video card manufacturer would
have.

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deutronium
Anyone know how much they cost?

~~~
Zuph
A friend emailed them for small quantity pricing a while ago.

"Thank you for contacting us. Our 16 pin package is the newest offering in our
Neuro-Bit line of memristor products. Single packages are $240.00 USD each. We
are offering a 5% academic discount on all of your purchases. The 16 pin dip
will be available for shipping late-May and we are taking pre-orders now."

~~~
knodi123
Help me out here- is that a red flag?

~~~
Zuph
Eh, depends on where you're coming from. These clearly aren't "production
grade." Maybe not even "academically curious grade." Until you can at least
get budgetary pricing without sending someone an email, it probably isn't even
worth investigating unless you're just intensely curious.

Never mind that $240 for 8 fragile, difficult-to-work-with memristors is
definitely not cheap.

~~~
theresistor
While I agree that they're not production grade, $240 is well within the
budget of, say, a EE research lab that wants to experiment with memristor-
based circuit topologies and has the equipment+expertise to handle them
properly.

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anonbanker
Since it's Boise, I'll put money on these guys being either former HP or
Micron employees that probably got their memristor IP as part of their golden
parachutes now that "The Machine" is gone.

------
yellowapple
Why is there a question mark in the title? The site claims it offers
memristors. No question about it.

