767499
story
Comments: 142 +- Hardware: Memristor Based RAM Could Be Out By 2009 on Friday July 11 2008, @05:04PM
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topichardware.gif); width:64px; height:55px;
hardware
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topictech2.gif); width:60px; height:80px;
technology
neural.disruption writes "According to the EETimes, HP is announcing that it 'plans to unveil RRAM prototype chips based on memristors with crossbar arrays in 2009.' I don't know if you remember the earlier story about HP Labs proving the existence of the Memristor that had been predicted in 1971 by Leon Chua, and has the nice property of maintaining a memory of the current that passes by it. This could bring us a new type of small non-volatile high-speed RAM at low cost because of the low complexity of the mechanism employed."
Related Stories
Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
Security Concerns (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems like this will make recovering encryption keys from RAM much easier. If I understand the article correctly, these devices won't automatically clear themselves or decay like conventional RAM. I'm not quite sure I want this thing in my computer until this gets worked out.
Re:Security Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
True, it's probably not a good idea to have ALL your memory as this stuff, but why not have say, the core OS files (The ones that wont contain any important, private data) stored in this type of memory for that near-instant-on effect? In theory, the OS could stay in RAM and just do a quick verification check to make sure it's not damaged/corrupted in some way (and since it's ALREADY in RAM, it should be lightning quick) and then reload any files that have been, then boom, you're at your desktop in a matter of seconds.
Plus, I doubt it'll actually be as fast as regular RAM anyway, that would be too good to be true, so chances are we'll just see this as a companion to good ol' DDR3/4/WhateverExistsAtTheTime.
It would certainly benefit the likes of embedded devices, set-top boxes and such that are starting to really take the piss with their multi-minute startup times.
Parent
Re:Security Concerns (Score:4, Informative)
near-instant-on effect
Now if only disk IO was actually the major delay in the boot process. You might consider driver initialization, software initialization, network delays, waiting for user interaction, etc.
Parent
Re:Security Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless, of course, you're waking a computer out of hibernate mode... then it's pretty much all about disk I/O throughput.
If this were possible, it could basically become unnecessary to actually *shut down* your computer.
More importantly, if you suddenly lose (or switch off) power it might be possible to simply pick up where you left off - with some minor firmware tweaks to get the hardware running again without wiping RAM.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am the only one thinking of the nightmare that making suspend default in Vista has caused? Get it to work at the software level first please.
Re:Security Concerns (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is current RAM needs to be maintained. Suspend to RAM doesn't help in a power outage and/or dead battery condition.
Otherwise yes, they're pretty much the same thing.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious, I always assumed that the main Bottleneck WAS the Hard drive. Do the things you mentioned really add that much time to the startup of a computer?
My computer's hard drive gets heavily accessed right up to when I see the desktop, surely having the system already in RAM would cut down startup times significantly?
Even better (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
couldn't you then conceivably use the same non-volatile RAM in the device memory?
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could probably have the OS zero out all memory, or just those physical memory frames for whose pages have been marked as needing to be erased (would require application changes, but that wouldn't be the first time).
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
In theory, the OS could stay in RAM and just do a quick verification check to make sure it's not damaged/corrupted in some way
Reminds me of letting Col. Clink check on the prisoners. Letting the OS "integrity check" itself is an amusing thought and a very, very bad idea.
then boom, you're at your desktop in a matter of seconds.
We get this pipe dream every few years - people talking about the "instant-on" computer. Sleep modes, wake modes, hibernation, etc.
I have an idea: grow a few seconds' worth of patience
Re: (Score:2)
what are you talkin here....there's already an instant on OS provided via motherboard [cnet.com].
The rest, I agree: integrity check = bad idea. I disagree that for whatever reason long bootup times should just be considered acceptable.
For reference's sake: it only starts at a minute, it ends at multiple minutes after patches, changes, etc. especially on windows and consoles. Not so much on linux.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I like how you've immediately assumed that I'm simply impatient just because YOU'VE never experienced what I'm referring to.
I notice in the list of electronic devices you have, none of them are Satellite/Cable boxes or Tivo-like devices.
I have one such device, it's a Cable box with a hard drive built into it and it takes a solid 2-3mins to start up.
Sure, that's not a big deal, it doesn't really bother me that much since I'm only missing 2-3mins of crap TV, but what does bother me is that the people who make
Re: (Score:3)
My "digital" cable box doesn't even have a hard drive but if the power goes down for any reason, it can take upwards of five minutes to reboot. If memristor RAM could fix that, I'm all for it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
For reference's sake...
I'd mod you up, but I can't find "+1 Get off my lawn"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Against malice, I agree, not useful. Of course, if the attacker has arbitrary read/write access to the nonvolatile RAM, it is game over, period. The logical solution would be to move control over the nonvolatile RAM to the system hardware. Just as the BIOS can restrict the system's choice of boot devices, it could lock or unlo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a matter of patience, it's a matter of eliminating a needlessly slow bottleneck on a system.
To expand upon the GP's point, if you could take 100GB of this stuff and slap it into your memory space you'd never, really, have to hit the hard disk for applications again. This does two things:
- Frees up your DRAM for things that actually change frequently.
- Frees up your hard disk which should be holding things that need long term storage, not executi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Security Concerns (Score:5, Funny)
Hear, hear! I don't even know why they bothered developing processors after the 386, or anything faster than 1200 baud modems. They worked fine, it's just these damn kids were too impatient to wait 15 hours to download 50 megs, or 3 hours to render a single frame of Doom 3.
Now they want computers to boot faster? I happen to *like* the fact that it takes 15 minutes to get Vista up and running. Gives me a chance to take a nap, or brew some coffee.
Parent
Re:Security Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)
"Managing to shave 5 seconds off boot? Not so much so, especially since it offers no other concrete advantages once you're booted"
What if you're a kernel, or bootloader developer? Saving 5 out of 20 seconds boot time means you're spending 25% less time waiting while you're testing. And that was just off the top of my head!
"we're back to having to load that memory check routine from another source"
That's really not that big a deal.
"of the most popular pipe dreams of these ideas? Do we have a set of checks for each file in there? Where did we store it? How long will it take to check it? Are we recalculating it constantly on the fly...?"
Um... ZFS? End to end checksumming? Pipe dream? Just because you've not heard of it being done, doesn't make it magic.
"might as well just keep its system state on a pair of revolving images on the hard disk anyways" ...because harddrives don't fail or need to be checked?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Managing to shave 5 seconds off boot? Not so much so, especially since it offers no other concrete advantages once you're booted.
If boot times can be dropped to a couple of seconds people will be less likely to leave their computers on for hours while away from their desks, just for the convenience of it.
Not to mention that it won't only be boot time, but possible load times of other software and files that is improved as well.
Re: (Score:2)
the uverse set top box seems to take about 5 minutes to fully boot up...
Re: (Score:2)
Since it is ALREADY a problem with conventional RAM, it will only make the issue a little worse.
Security and encryption software could be written in such a way that before memory is freed is is randomized.
I am sure it could be added to the OS layer of memory management as well so that all free memory gets randomized.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, that's a good point. And since it actually stores it's bits in an analog storage medium, you could in theory recover data from the memristors even after they've been written over, just like they do with magnetic drives.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/ [princeton.edu]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_boot_attack [wikipedia.org]
This attack was sort of one that was under the hat of pentesters and hobbyists until a few months ago when it was rather a do-it-yourself thing, but then McGrew Security made a followup PoC - http://mcgrewsecurity.com/projec [mcgrewsecurity.com]
non-volatile high-speed RAM... (Score:5, Funny)
Mr Resistor (Score:2)
Am I the only one who saw "Mr Resistor" [google.com] in the title?
(No it isn't a goatse link, and it's not a RickRoll)
Flash Killer (Score:5, Insightful)
If this stuff actually works as promised, it will be way faster and longer-lived (in terms of write cycles) than flash. 50nS is pretty slow compared to DRAM, but for flash replacement it should be pretty zippy. Especially if there's no need to do block erase and rewrites.
Re:Flash Killer (Score:5, Funny)
I'm still holding out for isolinear chips.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Pah. We upgraded to those centuries ago. What are you using, Duotronic systems? Come on man. Get with the future times.
Signed,
Ortega-Starfire
Former/Future science officer, U.S.S. Relativity
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(Ideally, you'd have battery-backed "smart R
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, this is going to have serious potential in the solid-state disk arena, but will probably not affect firmware and BIOSes as you don't update or access those a vast amount.
It can potentially make them much cheaper, because a memristor is a simpler element.
Still not holding my breath (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been saying they'll give us affordable NVRAM without the drawbacks of flash for years, and it still hasn't happened.
MRAM - fast, but not as fast as DRAM. Very low-density.
PRAM - more volatile than flash, because it can change state spontaneously based on temperature (thermally written).
FeRAM - can't be made with cutting-edge processes, and even then can't match the density of flash.
CBRAM - still experimental.
I'll just be surprised if HP can just produce a memory module that is as fast a DRAM, let alone as high-capacity as flash.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
MRAM does exist, it replaces battery backed 32KB SRAM chips.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Still not holding my breath (Score:5, Interesting)
Every single example you list above is based on the transistor. Sure, there's lots of variations (MRAM using magnets, PRAM using chalcogenide glass, FeRAM using a ferroelectric layer, etc.), but these are all basically: glue stuff on a transistor to store data.
Memristor-based RRAM is different. It doesn't use transistors at all. This is truly a departure from all of the exsting RAM technologies, and while the prospect of RRAM storage is pretty cool, the possibility of analog computing using memristors is even neater. I'm cautiously optimistic that this technology is going to take computing in some interesting directions.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but that is bullshit.
CBRAM, PRAM and RRAM are generally based on two terminal devices that are written at a high current and read at a low current.
For all of those there are two ways of arranging them into an array: A passive matrix with diodes or an active matrix with transistors. The former is slightly simpler to make but suffers from scalability issues.
The reason why HP made a passive matrix is simply because they don't own a fab capable of producing dense memory. This is nothing but a research to
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The mechanics of how these work make producing compact high speed arrays easy.
The circuit element is just two stacked planar layers between an underlying and overhead wire. Look at the electron microscope images to see what a row of them looks like... they're no bigger than the contact areas of the wires. A chip of these would be a grid of vertical wires, the active layers, then a grid of horizontal layers. The packing density is approximately wire spacing density.
Speed is good - you send a moderate volt
Nitpicking, I know, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Technically, he predicted the existence of a non-linear memristor. A linear memristor is exactly the same thing as regular resistor.
NV RAM? Drool... (Score:2)
Low cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Patents (Score:5, Funny)
You want an instant-on computer? (Score:2)
Buy a Tandy MC-10 or CoCo 2/3, or a Commodore 64/128. They boot under a second.
Great! (Score:3, Funny)
Information about... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)