

HP To Introduce Flash Memory Replacement In 2013 - modeless
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/07/0344214/hp-to-introduce-flash-memory-replacement-in-2013

======
jfruh
Wouldn't it be crazy/awesome if, after years of cost-cutting and right-sizing
and "pivoting" and various CEO's gimmicks, the thing that saved HP was
something that came out of their R&D department?

~~~
yuhong
If it happens, hopefully people will learn the right lessons.

------
modeless
EE Times has a more detailed article with some interesting statistics:

"Read times are less than 10 nanoseconds and write/erase times are about
0.1-ns. HP is still accumulating endurance cycle data at 10^12 cycles and the
retention times are measured in years"

[http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4229171/HP-Hynix-
to-...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4229171/HP-Hynix-to-launch-
memristor-memory-2013)

~~~
Someone
I _guess_ that 0.1 ns must be 0.1 us. As stated (also in eetimes), writing and
erasing will be at least an order of magnitude faster than reading. That seems
weird as writing typically takes more energy then reading.

The only reason I can think of for this to be reversed would be that reading
will be destructive. That, however, would make me wonder whether this can be a
good replacement for Flash. Think about it: reading the memory would run the
risk of erasing it.

~~~
modeless
Well, 0.1 us write times wouldn't make sense with the claim that this can
replace DRAM and SRAM, but those claims do seem rather dubious anyway...

------
pilom
Don't link to slashdot, link to the original article:
[http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/06/10/2011/51988/i...](http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Articles/06/10/2011/51988/ief2011-hp-
to-replace-flash-and-ssd-in-2013.htm)

~~~
modeless
I did, yesterday. It didn't make the front page.

------
icefox
I really hope this works out because I really want to play around with some
programmable memristers and this would help make them cheap.

------
karamazov
How reliable are memristors, as compared to HDDs and SSDs?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Potentially more reliable than both, but that remains to be proven out. HDDs
have a 1E14 unrecoverable harder error rate, flash is higher (1E15) The lack
of moving parts is a plus for SSDs and memristors but the susceptibility to
tunnelling electrons is higher on flash/memristors than in the magnetic domain
of HDDs. When they were first talked about at ISSCC the temperature
sensitivity of memristors was also mentioned.

I know, not a lot of useful info, my notes are sparse on these guys. I figured
we'd see pattern memory (IBM) sooner. Maybe we'll get both, that would suck
since they both need high initial costs to quickly offset their development
costs. Hard to do in a strongly competitive environment.

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/how-we-
fo...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/how-we-found-the-
missing-memristor)

[2] <http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20026553-76.html>

[3] <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6012/1810.abstract>

------
ericfrenkiel
this is really encouraging!

------
clistctrl
This is really exciting, I think there's a lot of potential in memristors, so
seeing it used for a practical purposes is great news.

