
Memristors' one-year delay will hit IT in the wallet - ck2
http://www.zdnet.com/memristors-one-year-delay-will-hit-it-in-the-wallet-7000000586/
======
pbharrin
This is a stupid article. The author makes the assumption that HP and Hynix
COULD ramp to high volume production, however it is clear from HP's statement
that this is not true:

"As with many other ground-breaking technologies being developed at HP Labs,
HP has not yet committed to a specific product roadmap for memristor-based
products,"

Let me also say that I worked in the non-volatile memory business for seven
years. Any organization that can scale better than its competitors will do so,
unless they don't like making money. End of story. If HP and Hynix are not
ramping to high volume, it's because they are not ready, not some stupid
conspiracy theory that they want to stagnate the development of cloud-buzzword
"technology".

~~~
petermonsson
Ah, a breath of fresh sanity from someone who knows the industry. That is very
welcome, thank you.

The semiconductor industry is brutal in general. Selling to consumers is
worse, but the worst by far is the part that sells any type of memory. Forget
the conspiracy theories. This space is full of dead companies. Someone will
eat you.

~~~
batista
> _The semiconductor industry is brutal in general. Selling to consumers is
> worse, but the worst by far is the part that sells any type of memory._

Really? Because there have been all kinds of price-fixing scandals and
accusations for the last 2 decades... Price fixing does not sound very cut-
throat to me...

~~~
petermonsson
The only DRAM price fixing scandal that I know of is the one from 1998 to 2002
which gave the involved parties litigation on their backs up until 2010. If
you know of any others, please let me know. Google did not turn up anything
else.

Anyway, I want to explain why the DRAM world is brutal:

Here is the DRAM top 10 from 2006:
<http://i.cmpnet.com/eetimes/seminews/2007/chart1_020107.gif>

And today the state is as follows:
[http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-
semicon...](http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-
semiconductor-blog/2012/03/top-ten-less-2-dram-companies.html)

Samsung: Eating everyone Hynix: Almost breaking even Qimonda: Dead Micron:
Making money Elpida: Bankrupt Nanya: Losing more money than it makes
Powerchip: Barely alive with 0.1% market share ProMos: Has sold its fabs, soon
to be dead Etron: Alive, but with less that 0.1% market share and 15 cent loss
per dollar sold. Winbond: Now only in specialty DRAM

So, Samsung and Micron are doing well, Hynix is barely OK and the rest are
sunk. Yes, I believe that the DRAM competition is fierce and brutal.

------
ck2
Why on earth was my title replaced? Sigh.

 _Revolutionary memristors purposely delayed to prevent cannibalization of
flash_

It's 100% accurate and more relevant.

~~~
mikeash
It makes no sense to me.

What's the advantage of memristor-based storage, exactly?

If it's cheaper to make, then sell storage at a price that undercuts the
competition but still makes a better profi.

If it's more reliable, then sell storage at a higher price with a better
warranty.

There's no sensible scenario where memristors are ready to go but they don't
want to sell any memristor products yet because it will hurt existing sales.
Either they can make a better product, or they can't, and if they can't make a
better product then the stuff simply isn't ready.

~~~
ck2
It's the same price for double the storage, less power and likely more
reliability.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/tha-amazing-memristor-
bey...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/tha-amazing-memristor-beyond-
moores-law-and-beyond-digital-computing/1309)

They are probably delaying to get their profit out of existing investments in
tool and die for their factories, as well as high inventories.

While all the manufactures are likely not in cahoots, it's probably like the
airline industry where they look to the left and right and nod at each other
and change fees right after each other.

Also notable how hard drive prices have not dropped even though supply is
completely back to normal.

~~~
aortega
Storage can be as reliable as you want, you only need to throw parity at the
problem. Flash is one of the most unrealiable technology today, chips are
ofter rated at only 10000 writes before bit-errors, flash is used as storage
today thanks to advanced Error-correction (ECC) algorithms. BTW spinning hard-
discs also use ECC since many years ago but it is much less powerful.

------
ahuibers
I haven't seen any lab demonstrations of multi Mbit devices. Until we see that
this is years away from production in my experience as a device physics
researcher. All storage technologies so far have taken 10 years plus to have
large market share and I don't see this as an exception.

------
Tagbert
Could they not charge a premium price for memristors early on to prevent flash
cannibalization and then bring the price down as they transition their output?

~~~
justincormack
Thats what I thought too. I did think they were going to have a sufficient
difference to flash that they would be able to compete in a different way. The
HPC market is the classic start point.

However, I think there may be other reasons. Maybe they haven't worked out the
connection architecture properly?

------
ryanmolden
Does HP have patents here that would prevent others from introducing this
tech? Or are they/Hynix simply the only ones with experience with the tech to
pull it off? This is such a clear example of one of the fears spelled out in
The Innovators Dilemma it isn't even funny.

Edit: whoops, mtgx says Samsung is also in this space, so it sounds like
patents can't be an obstacle, or at least until the suing starts.

~~~
raverbashing
Oh really, Samsung is going to compete with them?

So let's speculate

1 - They delayed this because of manufacturing problems and want to save face

2- They really are that stupid and gave a competitor a 1 year head start (or
they made a Gentleman's Agreement - but it wouldn't prevent even another
competitor getting in)

In short, this is extremely risky.

~~~
ryanmolden
3) They feel they are far enough ahead of competitors that they can afford to
"drain the pipeline of flash based products" and still come out ahead in
memristors ultimately.

I agree a purposeful delay in order to try and squeeze some drops out of
existing stock / sunk costs would be risky, and likely stupid. Clearly no
corporation has ever made short-sighted, stupid decisions like that before so
this would totally be a first :)

------
batgaijin
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328535.200-online-
sp...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328535.200-online-spat-over-
who-joins-memristor-club.html)

It seems like HP still hasn't been issued patents for it (at least by my
googling) so I guess they are happy to just sit on their tech.

Also, Memristors are already being actively used for military technology, most
notable the SyNAPSE project.

------
Klinky
I'll believe memristor tech when I see commercial products of it available. I
don't think it's far fetched that a company is slow to shift it's mainstay,
profitable business product to an unproven new technology that has no
mainstream commercial products out yet. Cutting edge tech is always rife with
delays and shortcomings that weren't anticipated until the rubber actually hit
the road.

While many in these comments are touting "double storage & reliability for the
same price", that would be for raw manufacturing costs, not including all the
R&D money and the cost of fabrication plants that must be built or retooled.
It is highly unlikely consumers will see those benefits anytime soon.

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zrail
I don't see why this is a big deal. It's a year, so what? We've waited
decades, a year isn't going to hurt anything. Hynix is a big business that is
heavily invested in flash and it takes a lot to completely change the core of
your business over, especially when you have to possibly build new fabs and
fab technology.

~~~
ck2
Double the storage space and possibly double the reliability for the same
price?

Also potential power savings.

A year is a huge deal if someone was planning on spending a million on a
datacenter to make it use SSD for database, etc.

~~~
evgen
Where do you get "for the same price"? I can assure you that even if
memresistors cost 1/10 to produce the equiv in other tech they would hit the
market at 10x the price. Better tech can get a higher price and as long as the
ability to provide market demand is limited by patents or the cost to
convert/build fabs then the supplier gets to set the price.

Seems like a lot of people in this discussion failed Econ 101.

~~~
Dylan16807
Competition pushes the price of a product toward the manufacturing cost of a
product over time.

------
ameasure
Hynix (2nd largest memory chip maker after Samsung) and friends were fined
just a couple years ago for price fixing memory,
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10126755>. If competition isn't a problem, why
waste money on costly innovation?

Reminds me of Eastman Kodak circa 1975
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak#Shift_to_digital>.

That said, this is pretty weak evidence of collusion.

------
adaml_623
This catchy headline is essentially saying that company X is going to watch
their growth and expenditure and maximise their profits in a manner which
won't benefit consumers.

The headline is interesting because it's stating the obvious, standard
business practice but possibly they have hit on the only way to glam up the
incredibly boring story of 'product will be delayed by 12 months'.

------
mtgx
What short-sighted thinking. This is why you don't see much innovation from
the big companies usually. This is like Apple thinking they shouldn't release
the iPad because it would cannibalize their Mac sales. Instead of being an
also-ran in flash, Hynix/HP could be the leaders in memristors. But it seems
you won't see them thinking like that.

Oh well, I guess Samsung will take the lead in that market, too, then, since I
think they were the other main company working on memristors.

~~~
unreal37
An LOL at "this is why you don't see much innovation from the big companies"
followed by a what-if-Apple-did-this example. Apple is a big company. The
biggest.

The article is B.S. If the release of this technology will replace all RAM,
Flash memory, and other memory storage technologies as the author expects,
they wouldn't need to delay it.

And lastly, if you believe the article, it says it's not in HP's control
anyways. It's the manufacture partner Hynix fault.

~~~
batista
> _An LOL at "this is why you don't see much innovation from the big
> companies" followed by a what-if-Apple-did-this example. Apple is a big
> company. The biggest._

And a LOL for misunderstanding his point.

He said that "this is why you don't see MUCH innovation from the big
companies", not "why you don't see ANY" innovation.

And he used Apple precisely as a _counter_example_ to that lack of innovation,
saying that what HP did would be like a hypothetical Apple saying they won't
release the iPad because that would cannibalise iPhone sales.

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ricardobeat
It only makes sense to continue selling the older, higher margin products
until a competitor comes up. They are asking for it.

I would even root for Samsung on this (also because it just finished my
laundry).

~~~
tsotha
>It only makes sense to continue selling the older, higher margin products
until a competitor comes up.

If you're the only one on the market with memristors the margin is determined
by whatever the market will bear, and if they're really that much better than
existing technologies it will be much larger.

None of this conspiracy stuff makes any sense. They're delaying a year because
they can't manufacture the product.

------
mikecane
When I first heard of HP's memristors, I was looking forward to them using it
in the TouchPad, to really compete against Apple. Now this. FAIL all around,
HP.

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ngvrnd
This is worrisome:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7319>

------
ck2
This might also explain why SSD prices are dropping fast.

50 cents per GB now and falling.

