
With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer - justincormack
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/206401-with-the-machine-hp-may-have-invented-a-new-kind-of-computer
======
jawns
For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a memristor is, as I was, HP has
an easy-to-understand analogy on its FAQ page about memristors:

"A common analogy for a resistor is a pipe that carries water. The water
itself is analogous to electrical charge, the pressure at the input of the
pipe is similar to voltage, and the rate of flow of the water through the pipe
is like electrical current. Just as with an electrical resistor, the flow of
water through the pipe is faster if the pipe is shorter and/or it has a larger
diameter. An analogy for a memristor is an interesting kind of pipe that
expands or shrinks when water flows through it. If water flows through the
pipe in one direction, the diameter of the pipe increases, thus enabling the
water to flow faster. If water flows through the pipe in the opposite
direction, the diameter of the pipe decreases, thus slowing down the flow of
water. If the water pressure is turned off, the pipe will retain it most
recent diameter until the water is turned back on. Thus, the pipe does not
store water like a bucket (or a capacitor) – it remembers how much water
flowed through it."

Source: [http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-
jun/memristor_faq.html](http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2008/apr-
jun/memristor_faq.html)

~~~
jacquesm
Interesting tidbit: a while ago, I was talking about memristors with a physics
trained person. And he told me something that really stuck:

It is impossible to make an inductor (coil) without resistance and without
capacitance. It is impossible to make a capacitor without some inductance and
a little bit of leakage. It is impossible to create a resistor that does not
have self-inductance or a bit of capacitance.

If you followed all that and you agree with it (because you've done some
electronics) or you've heard of 'parasitic capacitors' and such, then you can
see that it must somehow follow that parasitic mem-resistance must have been
with us all along, but is such a small effect that we simply failed to notice
it. No resistors, capacitors or coils that we normally use exhibits this
effect in such a way that we adapt our designs to it to minimize it.

That's in part the reason why it took so long to manifest in a usable form, if
the effect would be as devastating as resistance on powerlines, as capacitance
on wiring, as induction on large capacitors then we'd have exploited it long
ago.

So it's going to be something exceedingly subtle when and if it comes to
market.

~~~
danmaz74
Interestingly, this is exactly what the chief of HP labs said in this video
[1]: That lots of papers noted the effect and talked about anomalies, but no-
one made the connection to the memristors before them. He also says that the
effect is only really noticeable at nano scales (because it needs incredibly
high electric fields).

EDIT: on second thought, that's not the case, because the HP memristor is not
a memristor in the sense of the of the original paper describing it - it has
nothing to do with the magnetic flux. It can only be described with the same
set of equations, so, it behaves like a memristor, but is not "actually" a
memristor that completes the set [2]. That is, if I understood the video
correctly (but I think I did, as the speaker himself talked about a "trick" in
the beginning of the video).

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#mediaviewer/File:Two-...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor#mediaviewer/File:Two-
terminal_non-linear_circuit_elements.svg)

~~~
jacquesm
Nice to see confirmation of that theory from that high up.

It seemed extremely logical to me when I heard it the first time and like
everything else, in retrospect it is blindingly obvious.

I'd hate to see a memristor dropped into a circuit design and being handed the
task of 'fixing' spice to produce the correct output. But by the looks of it
the usefulness of individual memristors will be quite limited.

~~~
danmaz74
Can't reply to your other comment yet, so I'll do it here. I think that this
is a "duck typing" memristor: You can use it as a memristor, but it's not what
was predicted. Anyway, if you're interested, watch the video I linked (thanks
to @achille): It really explains what this is all about. If you have some
basic understanding of semiconductors physics I think you'll enjoy it :)

~~~
jacquesm
I think I get what you're going for now, sorry it took a while for the coin to
drop.

Just like a battery can _look_ like a capacitor under some conditions it
really isn't a capacitor.

Capacitors and batteries can be described using the same basic laws, even
though the fundamental mode of operation is completely different.

They have the same basic properties:

\- internal resistance

\- a certain capacity

\- a breakdown voltage

\- you can charge them

\- you can discharge them by connecting the terminals (hopefully through some
suitable load)

\- both exhibit self-discharge

\- have a certain amount of inductance

And yet the one is a real capacitor whereas the other one is an electro-
chemical device, only when you open one up or when you charge/discharge it a
large number of times can you see that there is a real difference between the
two, superficially they are interchangeable for some applications.

Does that get it right?

~~~
danelectro
An electrolytic capacitor is an electro-chemical device itself. Also, like a
battery, if the "electrolyte" is not without solvent then it is a liquid-state
device. As opposed to a film & foil capacitor which is a solid-state device.
Batteries generate a characteristic cell voltage as a result of a chemical
reaction. Capacitors store any voltage up to their maximum rating,
electrolytics have higher capacity/size ratio than film & foil due to the
chemical help of the electrolyte, but do not generate voltage on their own,
only store what is supplied from a power source.

------
valarauca1
A memristor is the 4th fundamental circuit component, along with capacitors,
resistors, and inductors.

The important part of memristors is that they can be arranged to form a
crossbar latch, which acts like a transistor.

This crossbar latches are very very small, and very low power. HP plans on
achieving data density of 100GB/cm^2 [1] with read write speeds approximately
100x faster then flash memory while using 1% of the energy. Also with lower
energy costs, expected data density is 1 Petabyte per cm^3 (due to 3D stacked
circuitry)

Basically when this technology comes of age we'll see smart phones reach the
order of terabytes of storage.

[1]
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1168454](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1168454)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Basically when this technology comes of age we'll see smart phones reach the
> order of terabytes of storage.

Looking forward to carrying the library of congress, netflix's entire catalog,
and all of openstreetmap on my phone in the next 5 years.

~~~
sliverstorm
Software grows to match the hardware. If storage goes up 100x, data will grow
to accommodate.

Some things won't grow, to be sure. Anything text-based, for example. But
movies, music, pictures... would probably all explode in fidelity and thus
size.

~~~
viraptor
Would movies and music really explode? Music hit the ceiling long time ago -
nobody's going to go for higher resolution / sampling rate than the current
"uncompressed" sound. Big publishers are intentionally sacrificing the quality
for loudness anyway.

Movies can practically scale up to retina-equivalent on wall-size equivalent
only. Even then not many people will want TVs bigger than they can look at
without moving their eyes...

Pictures could still grow, especially the internal raw representation taken
from the light capturing element, but that's likely to be down-scaled when
saving to kill noise.

What else is there that really takes space? (that is not limited by the
effective resolution of human senses)

~~~
TkTech
Sensor data is one I would guess. Modern cell phones have an incredible number
of sensors in them, but usually don't log the data when it's quickly sampled
(accelerometers, background mic), or sample it rarely/slowly (GPS, barometer,
ambient lighting) when it is logged. I would personally love to have days,
weeks, or months of raw data sampled frequently.

Edit: I'd imagine this is due both to a limited amount of storage, a limited
number of writes to current sold-state mediums, and energy usage, all of which
this technology appears to solve.

~~~
DelwinAmber
Energy usage is the huge one - if this is applied to computing and not just
storage then maybe.

------
Arjuna
Dr. Leon Ong Chua [1] wrote this paper [2] in 1971 entitled, _Memristor - The
Missing Circuit Element_ , where he first outlined the theory of the
_memristor_.

Admittedly, this is not my field, so my fascination may appear to be quite
naive to the well-initiated, but I find it simply intriguing that the
memristor was first _theorized_ to exist; that is, it is somewhat analogous to
the Higgs boson, in that the mathematics precedes the discovery.

To my point (from the paper):

"Although no physical memristor has yet been discovered in the form of a
physical device without internal power supply, the circuit-theoretic and
quasi-static electromagnetic analyses presented in Sections III and IV make
plausible the notion that a memristor device with a monotonically increasing
_φ-q_ curve could be invented, if not discovered accidentally."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_O._Chua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_O._Chua)

[2]
[http://www.cpmt.org/scv/meetings/chua.pdf](http://www.cpmt.org/scv/meetings/chua.pdf)

~~~
perlgeek
Another thing that has been predicted by theory first was the laser:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#History)

------
achille
I encourage folks to watch this tech talk by HP Research Labs on the discovery
of the memristor and implementation details. It goes into the gory technical
details, from the low level physics to the construction of the gates, the
truth tables, and the high level computation possibilities once chips are
assembled in a crossbar package.

>
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY)

~~~
mbell
Any idea if their materials have changed? He speaks of Platinum and Titanium
Dioxide as the materials they are using. Even discounting the cost of spinning
up the necessary fabrication facilities, I would think such materials would
keep the costs prohibitive for mass adoption.

~~~
regularfry
Platinum has a _long_ history in industrial applications, often in surprising
quantities. There's got to be a few orders of magnitude more of it in a
catalytic converter than you would want on a chip die.

Titanium dioxide is better known as white paint pigment. Or sunscreen. People
smear it on their skin in large quantities. It's not what you'd call scarce.

------
haberman
> “If you want to really rethink computing architecture, we’re the only game
> in town now,” he said.

Another way of putting this: because of patents, we're in a privileged
position of being the only people who are allowed to work on this problem.

So instead of the whole world rushing to make something interesting with this
new tech, we get a group of people working in an ivory tower trying to come up
with the perfect thing.

If we're lucky, they'll execute well and deliver a compelling product that
they have monopoly power over for 10 years, or however long the patents last.

If we're not lucky, they'll bumble around like cable providers trying to
develop "valuable add-ons", and the only reason they'll have any success is
because no one is allowed to compete with them.

Sorry if that's overly pessimistic, but that's how this article came off to
me. I guess patents do have the benefit that we are getting to hear about this
development at all instead of it being a tightly-controlled trade secret. And
this kind of payoff is what funds the R&D gamble to begin with. I just hope
that they actually deliver reusable parts that other people can build into
bigger innovations instead of trying to control the innovations themselves.

~~~
ohitsdom
I don't think it's a patent issue so much as a question of resources. Sure,
Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have the resources to develop a similar
machine, but a new type of computer would wipe out their business model in a
much more devastating manner than HP. HP has the resources, but also isn't
enjoying too much success to scare away this risk.

~~~
Tloewald
If HP invents an insanely superior computer it will still need software, and
HP hasn't lit the world on fire with its software. The real victim would be
Intel/ARM.

It's not like Linux / Mac OS X / Windows won't run on a computer with a huge
amount of RAM and no "hard disk". Most users won't care if a 100x faster
computer runs their existing stuff only 10x faster.

------
ambler0
From the last paragraph:

"The Machine isn’t on HP’s official roadmap. Fink says it could arrive as
early as 2017 or take until the end of the decade. Any delivery date has to be
taken with some skepticism given that HP has been hyping the memristor
technology for years and failed to meet earlier self-imposed deadlines."

So, does anyone actually know whether significant new progress is being made
on this project, or is this article just a win for HP's PR department and
nothing more?

~~~
ableal
Well, in the past there was also some hoopla about IBM's Josephson junction
and Intel's bubble memories.

After a few years, the subject goes away to die in encyclopedia articles.

If you do not have a viable product after six years, the outlook is bleak ...

------
dvanduzer
Is this about a storage breakthrough with memristors, about alternatives to
Von Neumann architecture, or just an incomprehensible press release?

~~~
joezydeco
A little of each. The article got kind of meta at the end.

 _" Any delivery date has to be taken with some skepticism given that HP has
been hyping the memristor technology for years and failed to meet earlier
self-imposed deadlines."_

~~~
justincormack
A little of each, but a lot of money being thrown at it, three quarters of HP
research.

------
cliveowen
I so much want this to be true, I can't wait for it. Not having a layered
memory architecture means no VM, everything has be rethought from the
filesystem down. On a related note: "Operating systems have not been taught
what to do with all of this memory, and HP will have to get very creative."
Anyone knows what this could possibly mean?

~~~
sp332
Well, you wouldn't have to save files. You could just use a data structure in
main memory because it's non-volatile. But how would you share data between
programs when there's no disk? And you could execute binaries directly from
storage without "loading" them into memory first. But you'd have to keep an
original copy somewhere in case it modifies itself as it runs.

~~~
markbnj
You'd probably still have memory partitioned into persistent areas and runtime
heap of a sort, and you might very well continue to use the file system
metaphor because it still makes sense to humans. Whether a file is bits on
magnetic disk, in flash memory, or fast persistent RAM isn't all that
meaningful to the user. As for sharing, I don't see why this would be an
issue. If you have to move memory contents between machines then you still
need some sort of external transport, whether it is a network, or a glowing
glass cube.

~~~
sp332
Filesystem semantics are a bottleneck. Fusion IO had to get rid of them when
they demoed their billion-IOPS platform last year.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3434711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3434711)

For communicating data between programs, would you create a filesystem object
that points to memory inside your program, or what?

~~~
colanderman
That doesn't make any sense. Create a file, memory-map it, bam, you have RAM
performance with "filesystem semantics". (There is NO overhead associated with
memory-mapping a file on a ramdisk in the Linux kernel.)

Probably what they're referring to is something more along the lines of
replacing SCSI or NFS with a protocol that is a better match for the random
access patterns used to access in-memory structures. (Hence their 64-byte I/O
size; that is equal to a cache line on Intel architectures.)

~~~
sp332
Hm, how would this memristor stuff connect to the system? Will it look like a
memory controller or more like PCI-e flash?

~~~
wmf
It sounds like HP is pitching it as memory.

------
drcode
It seems to me HP saw the marketing power of "Watson" (a platform for
marketing AI technologies) and are trying to create "The Machine" to build a
marketing platform around advanced computer architecture concepts.

Just like IBM had at least a few interesting ideas to give Watson credibility,
HP hopes its memristor work will give "The Machine" enough credibility that
they won't get laughed out of the room once they parade it around the MSM.

------
squigs25
Soooo... this is basically just persistent memory right?

HP has been working on the memristor since 2008. Memristors have already been
produced in labs by U of Michigan:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor)

This article seeks to give the image that this is a novel idea that investors
can take advantage of. In reality, it is not.

~~~
mitchty
Actually, the cool bit about memristors is that you could treat them like both
a transistor for computation or for memory, or flip. Like an fpga.

So imagine the difference in an operating system that could retain its running
image between reboots, and not have to distinguish things like stack/heap.

And could reconfigure more computing resources on the fly and back again.

It is... a very different view of computing. Exciting though.

~~~
colanderman
_So imagine the difference in an operating system that could retain its
running image between reboots_

What do you mean by this? This sounds like hibernation to me.

 _not have to distinguish things like stack /heap_

I'm lost here too. This is a distinction that is made for purposes of program
structure, not to kotow to demands of hardware.

~~~
trebor
Okay, imagine that to put your computer into hibernation mode all you need to
do is hit the power button. This is instantaneous because none of the data has
to be synced to permanent memory, because it's _already in permanent, non-
volatile memory_.

I'm not sure what he means by distinguishing between stack/heap either.

~~~
mitchty
The stack heap is a bit of a jab at the harvard architecture in general.

I see memristors as being closer to a Von Neumann architecture.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture)

Even then its not a perfect analogy admittedly. Sorry for the confusion!

I guess a better analogy would be able to be get rid of the idea of "loaded
into memory" versus "in ram" versus on permanent storage.

------
untothebreach
Link to the printable version, for those who don't like paginated stories:

> [http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/206401-with-
> the...](http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/206401-with-the-
> machine-hp-may-have-invented-a-new-kind-of-computer)

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed the url to that.

------
sushirain
The biggest difference the memristor brings is to Machine Learning. The
memristor is a first step towards a hardware implementation of Hebb's rule -
"neurons that fire together wire together". Hebb's rule variants are used in
machine learning algorithms to do things like web-search, image/object
recognition, etc. (Specifically, Hebb's rule can be used to compute PCA.)

It's interesting to note that the brain does not have separate components for
memory and computation. Every neuron computes and stores at the same time.

~~~
Houshalter
I don't think that's correct. Doesn't the hippo campus store memories?

------
inportb
> Most applications written in the past 50 years have been taught to wait for
> data, assuming that the memory systems feeding the main computers chips are
> slow.

... and they'd still have to wait for data, knowing that modern apps love
pulling data from the network.

------
al2o3cr
Sounds really neat, but "2017 - next decade" is the engineering estimate
version of "sometime, maybe never".

~~~
moonlighter
Yup. They lost me at "The company says it will bring the Machine to market
within the next few years".

~~~
vram22
I have my doubts too. Also the announcement looks a bit like the earlier case
of HP almost betting the company on the acquisition of Autonomy (if that was
the right name of that company it acquired a few years ago, before writing it
off).

------
twic
It really is incredible, the innovation that comes out of these Silicon Valley
startups!

~~~
kansface
Startups can't throw a billion dollars and a decade at a MVP. This is not an
argument against startups.

------
wmf
Yet another article about HP's future monopoly on computing that doesn't
mention PCM, RRAM, STT-RAM, etc.

------
tlb
If you want to start developing for this class of machine, you can build a
prototype using DRAM, which is equivalent as long as the power stays on.

------
yellowapple
That's pretty awesome. Memristors are very promising for creating fast, high-
density, non-volatile storage, and it's good to see that HP's seeing that in
the midst of the solid-state flash memory craze and working on commercial
applications for them.

What's also awesome is that - according to the article - HP plans on open-
sourcing its custom "Machine OS"; rather refreshing coming from a company
that's traditionally released its own operating systems under non-free
licenses.

I'm not normally a fan of HP (aside from their printers), but seeing them go
after this kind of stuff is certainly exciting.

------
grondilu
Totally bought ten shares of HPQ after learning about that. Who knows, their
plan might actually work. Go HP!

~~~
lucb1e
I bet Businessweek has some too, the way it's written.

------
scythe
There's a catch, of course -- always a catch: a truly nonvolatile memristor
violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But see:

[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/abs/ncomms2784.ht...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/abs/ncomms2784.html)
(open access)

The physics is (unsurprisingly) rather involved and I don't have time to
decipher it, but, yeah, here's the guts.

------
cwyers
"HP’s bet is the memristor, a nanoscale chip that Labs researchers must build
and handle in full anticontamination clean-room suits."

So... it's a chip.

~~~
angersock
Is it web scale? Can we make it social?

~~~
bkurtz13
Obviously; it's been designed upfront to be SOLOMO.

~~~
jtokoph
It's too bad they haven't caught up to MoLoSo yet.

------
rasz_pl
TLDR they are hyping up Memristors and hinting at HP trying to bundle it with
some of their proprietary crap if/when they finally deliver.

~~~
LaikaF
You know a lot of programs that know how to use memristors?

~~~
joezydeco
All of them?

It's just another type of non-volatile storage.

~~~
caster_cp
I think the point here is not "knowing how to use memristors". Sure, it is
possible to use them simply as another type of non-volatile memory. But it's
the same as having an airplane and driving it on the road.

Memristors, the way they are hyped, promise to be orders of magnitude smaller,
faster, cheaper AND less energy consuming than all of the other memories that
exist. All at the same time. If time proves this all to be true, it can bring
really groundbreaking changes to computing. And we all will be able to watch
more funny cat videos, at a greater resolution.

------
alyxr
What's the long-term reliability/durability of memristors? Do they die after
too many reads or writes?

------
chrisweekly
Now THIS is "Hacker News". Perhaps a slightly unlikely source (does
businessweek usually have this quality?) but v interesting article and
discussion here. Sorry not to be adding more substantively to it, just glad
it's here. :)

------
api
Seems like a test platform for memristor tech.

~~~
oddevan
Is there a better way to test a tech than to make a product with it?

~~~
valarauca1
Well they announced it cautiously back in 2006, popular science ran an article
on it. They've done some press mainly with EE magazines since then.

This technology has been in R&D for nearly a decade. I figure it pretty
mature.

~~~
jacquesm
> This technology has been in R&D for nearly a decade. I figure it pretty
> mature.

Funny, I read that the exact opposite way. If it was mature we'd be seeing
products.

~~~
valarauca1
>Martin Fink, the chief technology officer and head of HP Labs, who is
expected to unveil HP’s plans at a conference Wednesday.

~~~
jacquesm
Plans are not products, but let's wait and see before we get all happy.

~~~
rogerdpack
Yeah my thought too--I'll believe it when they actually _release_ a product.
It's like most research projects--initial results are great. Having it on the
market means it really exists though...

~~~
jacquesm
GMR went to market from discovery within a decade:

[http://www.research.ibm.com/research/gmr.html](http://www.research.ibm.com/research/gmr.html)

I've been hearing for so long about the memristor revolution being just around
the corner that I will simply wait until I can buy it before I get happy. It's
cynical, for sure, but HP have been hyping this once too many for me.

I _do_ think it is great that they're working on this as hard as they are and
I think if it pays off HP will be worth more than Apple by the time they're
done. A fundamental break-through of this magnitude will be worth a fortune
the likes of which we can probably not even imagine.

------
goblin89
This computer may take as long as a decade to build, according to the article.
Why did HP choose to reveal their hand so early? Isn't it preferable to take
everyone (especially competitors) by surprise?

------
shmerl
_> Fink has assigned one team to develop the open-source Machine OS, which
will assume the availability of a high-speed, constant memory store._

It's great that they decided to make it open from the start.

------
Shivetya
as for a new OS, single level store OSes should work just fine in such an
environment.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Various forms of naming hierarchies and tag databases are more natural for
humans, though, than a numbered array.

------
rntz
The article mentions that

> Fink has assigned one team to develop the open-source Machine OS, which will
> assume the availability of a high-speed, constant memory store.

I have to ask: if this is open-source, where is it? Perhaps my google-fu is
weak, but I can't find anything but news articles talking about "The Machine".

EDIT: Aha, found mention in some articles that it "will be made" open source.
Future tense. That makes more sense.

------
DonGateley
They talk about memristors being the fourth type of circuit element and the
final element at that.

It's just a resistor with memory. i.e. its R value can be changed by current
and remembered. Wouldn't an inductor with memory in the sense that it's L is
changed by voltage or current and remembered be a fifth and a capacitor with a
C that is changed and remembered be sixth?

------
marvin
In case there's anyone in here who knows: Why does the Wikipedia page for
memristors say that this 4th circuit element is proven to be impossible to
create in physical reality, due tp the laws of thermodynamics?

Either HP must be lying, physics must be wrong or whomever figured out this
"proof" must have screwed up.

~~~
VikingCoder
I think there's STILL debate about whether you can actually make a REAL
memristor, or whether you can merely make something that behaves exactly as a
memristor would.

So, in theory you can't make one, but in practice you can. Something like
that.

~~~
lucb1e
> make a REAL memristor, or whether you can merely make something that behaves
> exactly as a memristor would.

Alan Turing would say there is no difference.

------
christianbryant
I'm looking forward to the list of exploits that emerge post-release. Exciting
stuff, particularly in terms of moving OS development forward independent of
the usual suspects.

------
mathattack
I am happy to see them emerging as an R&D power. They haven't had much to show
for themselves lately, so I wish them well on this.

------
jayantsethi
Can someone please explain how can light be used to transfer data in
computers?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I assume they're talking about fiber optics, or something similar. An optical
fiber "wire" made of silica or plastic carries photons the way copper carries
electrons. Most telecom trunks use them these days.

The only thing is that I've never heard of fiber optics being used inside a
machine, only to connect one machine to another. I imagine the principles are
similar, though.

------
rogerdpack
My first thought is "whoa, they are going to have to figure out how to make
those screaming fast to be able to keep up with the speed of SSD's by the time
memristors are released" (though I guess the appeal of practically unlimited
storage is nice...)

------
srbryers
Professor F(r)ink??

------
Eleutheria
> could replace a data center’s worth of equipment with a single refrigerator-
> size machine

Ten years later it will fit in your pocket.

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bayesianhorse
The government has a secret system: a machine ...

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marincounty
HP need to show up at my door with a check for $599.00 plus tax for a laptop
that I used 5 times and died on the day of 366! Nerds remember. I don't think
this Podunk company realizes once you lose a customer, you lose them for a
long time. The reverse is true; once a male buys a product he likes--you have
a customer for life. It's taught in every business school? Men just want the
dam thing to work? Oh, and hire a CEO who knows a little bit about
engineering? That last sentence goes to all hardware companies.

