The HP Memristor Debate

New submitter AaronLS writes "There has been a debate about whether HP has or has not developed a memristor. Since it's something fairly different from existing technologies, and similar in many ways to a memristor, I think they felt comfortable using the term. However, the company has been criticized for using that labeling by former U.S. patent officer Blaise Moutett. On the other hand, had HP created a new, unique label, they would have probably gotten flack for pretending it's something new when it's not. Will anything positive come from this debate? Electrical engineering analyst Martin Reynolds sums it up nicely: 'Is Stan Williams being sloppy by calling it a "memristor"? Yeah, he is. Is Blaise Moutett being pedantic in saying it is not a "memristor"? Yeah, he is. [...] At the end of day, it doesn't matter how it works as long as it gives us the ability to build devices with really high density storage.'"

What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like I'm eavesdropping in the middle of a conversation between two mental patients.

Re:What the hell?

[Yvan256]

Nope, that's just one patient talking to himself.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[TheBilgeRat]

why no mod points when the funny is brought?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

try NASA.

Re:Lousy summary

[geekoid]

ubrgeek my ass.

Re:

[lewiscr]

I could accept "What's a memristor?" from a newbie, but a mid-6digit UID? There have been a plenty of memristor articles on /. [slashdot.org], going back to 2008.

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Well in defense of 6digit newbies, this awkward portmanteau does sound like Chinglish.

Re:

[Jesus_666]

Yeah. Just like "transceiver" and "modem" this term will never catch on.

Re:

[hazydave]

Well, a six digit newbie could still technically be a software-only type. Hard to believe, I know, that such folk might not have built their own motherboards, tape interfaces, hacked TVs into CVBS monitors, or even read early issues of "Kilobaud", Byte, or Radio-Electronics. But its possible.

On the other hand, any dude self-titled "ubergeek" not knowing what a memristor is... time for a name change, buddy.

I also suggest that a six digiter fool enough to admit such a crisis of common knowledge around here, i

Re:

[drkstr1]

Well I sure as hell don't know what a memristor is. I tend to leave those trivial details to the low paid mechanics (hardware guys ). :P

Re:

[kestasjk]

No-one I've ever worked with would say something so ignorant about the hardware engineers who help enable our business, and often get paid more than us to do it.

Re:

[Nite_Hawk]

Sadly it's a tragedy that seems all too common these days. The IT admins, software engineers and hardware engineers think they know how to do each other's jobs better than they do. Instead of working together, they try to build their own little power bases to control each other. If you've found a place to work where that's not the case, cherish it. In my experience it's not as common as one would hope.

Re:

[drkstr1]

Take it easy there bud. I thought the little emoticon at the end there made it clear that it was only light hearted kidding. I am quite aware that hardware requires a type of thinking and skillset that I lack. My best friend teases me all the time for being a software guy, and I return the favor.

Re:

[tambo]

> I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have to RTFA just to understand the key word in the summary ("memristor"). It's sloppy writing not to explain it.

>

Couple with that the title "U.S. patent officer." There's no such thing.

Blaise Mouttet is a former patent *examiner* for the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The USPTO currently employs over 6,000 patent examiners, each of whom is expected to be of "ordinary skill in the art." There's no indication that this individual's opinion is any more significant

Re:

[alva_edison]

TFA also says he has several patents and papers on memristors.

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn]

From looking at the diagram in TFA i'm just going to assume that they should have called it a flux capacitor.

Re:Lousy summary

[narcc]

Should every summary take the time to explain every term that someone might not know?

Does every article about the iPhone need to explain that it's a smartphone product produced by Apple? (Apple is a California based company that produces computers and some consumer electronics. A smartphone is a cellular telephone based on a mobile computer, typically integrating features found in other portable computing and other personal electronics products. A cellular telephone is ... a network is ... )

If you don't know what a memristor is, first turn in your geek card, then punch the term in to HotBot. (HotBot was a popular search engine in the late 1990's. A search engine is ... )

Re:

[Jesus_666]

Hang on. What's a california and how did Apple go from there to computers?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You could've searched for that word in less time that it took to post*. I mean really just from the word you would think it has something to do with transistor or resistors and memory. Portmanteau's aren't generally the hardest words to figure out and the /. audience shouldn't have trouble with this one.

Double-click or double tap
Right-click or hold touch
Select search

Re:

[hawkinspeter]

If you don't know what it is and can't be bothered to find out, then it's safe to say the article isn't for you. Go somewhere else and wait for the Fox News version that explains all the hard words in nice easy ones.

Fox news Version

[Kupfernigk]

"Some elitist scientists argued about something you wouldn't understand. That proves scientists can't be trusted to tell the truth about climate change".

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh FFS: memristor [lmgtfy.com]

Memristors

[Master Moose]

For those like me that went huh?

The memristor ( /mmrstr/; a portmanteau of "memory resistor") was originally envisioned in 1971 by circuit theorist Leon Chua as a missing non-linear passive two-terminal electrical component relating electric charge and magnetic flux linkage. More recently the memristor definition was generalized by Leon Chua to cover all forms of 2-terminal non-volatile memory devices based on resistance switching effects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor [wikipedia.org]

Personally, I still have no idea.

Re:Memristors

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary of the memristor and this controversy at Memristor Identity Crisis [tikalon.com].

Re:Memristors

[Hatta]

Keep reading. The basic idea is here:

The resistance of a memristor depends on the integral of the input applied to the terminals (rather than on the instantaneous value of the input

It's like a resistor but the resistance varies based on the current applied to it in the past.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, Leon Chua, for inventing the PC, 2-terminal (I mean AC socket) non-volatile memory device ! Its resistance does change too.

K.L.M.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What gives? As long as it's close enough...

[jiriw]

'They' say it isn't a true memristor because its data deteriorates a bit over time. But ... isn't that true of all other current basic electronic components as well? Capacitors have some leakage, making it a 'bit' a resistor. Inductors do not have a perfect Q. Even at its resonance point some energy is dissipated as heat, dampening the resonance circuit it is part of and making it a 'bit' a resistor as well. Resistors are most of the time at least 'half' a winding on a 'coil'... when alternating current passes through them with a high frequency, they act a 'bit' as an inductor. And they may have a parasitic capacitance with other components near it.

So, what gives if this HP invention is not the 'perfect' memristor. As long as it's close enough, it would do. In other words: if it quacks like a duck...

Re:

[Johann Lau]

why of course! [sandboxx.org] :P

Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough...

[FrankSchwab]

The comment above (http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3004785&cid=40771055) is more informative - a real Memristor is defined in terms of electric and magnetic fields. The HP memristor looks just like a real one, but doesn't involve a magnetic field at all.

Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough...

[Matimus]

I came here to say precisely this. It isn't an 'ideal' component. Which is what the theory is based on. But then neither is any electrical component you can think of. Even resistors stop being linear at very high or very low voltages / currents. Anybody ever seen an ideal current source? An ideal voltage source? And ideal op-amp? Its not ideal because it is a real device. Ideal components only exist on paper.

Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough...

[neonsignal]

The issue here isn't the imperfection of the HP device. It is a matter of semantics.

The 'memristor' was conceived as a term to describe a basic device where the change in flux is related to the change in charge.

What HP have produced is a device that substantially behaves like a memristor, if you are only measuring current and voltage at the terminals. That's useful if you want to build a memory device, since the behaviour is such that resistance will vary with the integral of the current through it.

However, the physics by which the HP device works is not a physics of memristance. For practical purposes, that may not matter; it is a simple device with useful properties. But terminology wise, it is memristance behaviour, not an unqualified memristor.

Equivalently, one can build an active circuit that uses a capacitor and a feedback loop to emulate an inductor. It isn't technically an inductor at all, but it does get called an "active inductor".

Re:

[epine]

At the end of day, it doesn't matter how it works as long as it gives us the ability to build devices with really high density storage.

Goldman Sachs creams their jeans over this kind of IQ-dismissive pragmatism among the puntocrats.

At the end of day, it doesn't matter how much it costs to ship a 50lb bucket of roofing nails as long as it gives us the ability to shop in our pyjamas; nor does it matter whether the business model has ever flirted with a profitable quarter, so long as it garners eyeballs.

FTFY.

Re:What gives? As long as it's close enough...

[martin-boundary]

Terminology IS important. Suppose HP gets a patent on their "memristor", and suppose someone else discovers a true memristor within 20 years. The HP "memristor" could set back the state of science with stupid patent lawsuits for a generation.

Let's keep scientific terminology pure, and not let the business types hijack all our established terms for their marketing bullshit.

Re:

[neonsignal]

I agree. Semantics (the relation of language to meaning) is important. I wasn't defending HP's misuse of the word 'memristor'.

Re:

[hazydave]

Agreed. Any off the shelf inductor is composed of inductive, resistive, and capacitive components. And in fact, go above its self resonance frequency and the component will behave redominantly as a capacitor. Just sayin.... the datasheet still says "inductor". No one expects a memristor to be the world's first perfect component.

The pot is black and has conflict of interest

[Morgaine]

Mouttet, a former U.S. patent officer who specialized in nanotechnology, has long argued that HP's technology is not really a memristor. "All HP is doing, in my opinion, is skewing the history to make it look like they were the originators of this technology and it is really not true", Mouttet tells Wired. "To me, this is unethical."

Former U.S. patent officer calls someone unethical. The mind boggles.

And as if that weren't enough, he has patents in the area himself and therefore cannot be a fair witness.

Skepticism about radical new devices is always healthy, but Mouttet's opinion on this topic inspires the opposite of confidence.

Re:

[romanval]

Would you rather have somebody working the patent office that has no idea of what such technologies entail?

Re:

[Threni]

Would you rather have somebody working the patent office that has no patents in the area of such technologies?

FTFY

Re:

[O('_')O_Bush]

False dichotomy. I would want someone familiar or with expertise in the subject area, but without the conflict of interest of having patents themselves.

Yes-Or-No , should we even care?

[Crypto Gnome]

For Example: In todays fog-bound and befuddled cellular market we find people BLATANTLY branding their products 4G when , in actual fact, they are NOT.

And no I'm not just talking about The BIG A who chose to market their 4G (ie LTE capable) product in Australia as such even though it COULD NOT talk to the LTE network in Australia. I'm talking about branding a product as 4G when it DOES NOT USE ACTUAL 4G TECHNOLOGY.

So if there's no real (ie financially punitive damages) backlash in the 4G-not-reall

Wow... Is everyone clueless?

[WaywardGeek]

The above comments were unusually clueless, so here's a new topic, way at the bottom.

Do any of the previous posters have any actual experience dealing with memristors? My phone rang off the hook when this BS story hit the Internet a few years ago. I worked at QuckLogic, where we built "memristors", but failed to have the marketing brilliance to call them anything other than "antifuses". I don't blame the guy at HP who did pull this off. That's how the game is played.

Here's reality. "Memristors" are the basis of Actel and QuickLogic antifuse based FPGAs. We had them characterized years before they were discovered by HP. The more charge you put through them, the lower the resistance. If you put current the other way, the resistance goes up. It was somewhat linear, so I have to beat myself up for not calling them memristors.

HP won the marketing round. However, people now have high expectations for this technology making something useful. If they want to make programmable logic out of it, they should talk to someone like me.

Re:

[FrankSchwab]

Interesting. I always thought anti-fuses were a one-way kind of thing - start at high resistance, and program them to low resistance, with no reverse path. I didn't know that they went both ways (as it were).