What’s The Memristor And Where It Comes From

There is a big news, this week is HP will work with Hynix, using for about 2013 years ago Memristor memory device, and flash memory. This is considered an important milestone in the industry, but what is Memristor? What magical properties, which make it so important? Version in this article, try to use the simplest way to introduce Memristor is this interesting “new” electronic components, and discuss why it can be a transistor, since one of the most important electronic progress.

What is Memristor ?

Memristoris’ English Name-Memristor from “the Memory” and “Resistor” the merger of the two word, from these two words can wash out the function of it. Is the first to put forward the concept of today is, Chinese scientists Cai Shaotang, at that time at Berkeley university in the United States. Time is in 1971, in charge, the relationship between the current, voltage and flux, chua inference in the resistors, capacitors, and inductors, still should have a component that represents the relationship between the electric charge and magnetic flux. The effect of this component, is the resistance will be changed by through the flow of electricity, and even if current is stopped, the resistance will still stay in the previous value, only accept to reverse the current it will be pushed back. With common conduit metaphor, current is through the water, and resistance is the pipe thickness, when water flows in one direction in the past, the water will become more and more thick, with the water flow at this moment, if turn off the water pipe thickness will remain unchanged; Conversely when the water flow from the opposite direction, the pipes will be more and more thin. Because such a component can “remember” electrical flow, therefore is called Memristor .

 What’s the use of Memristor?

 

Found in the… No. Chua was put forward Memristor , only because it should be on the mathematical model. In order to prove the feasibility, he used a heap of resistor, capacitor, inductor and amplifier made a simulation have resistance effect of the circuit, but did not find out what material itself has the obvious effect of Memristor , and more importantly, no one is looking for – that is an integrated circuit is also fledgling stage, soon became popular with a computer to home there’s at least 15 years of time!

HP’s Crossbar Latch

 

So HP will debut at this moment. HP did not in fact looking for Memristor , it was a HP Phillip j. Kuekes leading team, the ongoing called Crossbar Latch technology research. The principle of the Crossbar Latch is composed of a row of a row of vertical and horizontal lines of the grid, at every intersection, put a “switch” to link a horizontal and vertical lines. If we can make the two wires to control the state of the switch, the every intersection point on the grid can store one bit of data. Under this kind of system data density and access rate are unheard of, the question is, what kind of material can when the switch? The material must have “open” and “off” state, the two state must can manipulate, more important, and under the premise of without changing state, play the effect of the switch, or stop the current will be allowed to pass. How to get out of the material got HP engineers, so they have empty Crossbar Latch such a nice idea, but can’t achieve. Who knows what they are looking for, it is Memristor ?

The accident of silicon dioxide

Breakthrough comes from another. Another by Stanley Williams HP team leader in the research of silicon dioxide, accidentally found electronic properties of silica in some very strange. Record was very strange is very strange, calculate, but his colleague Greg Snider reminded him that may be today, and perhaps Crossbar Latch in search of something.

Silica as today is used as such – a very thin piece of titanium dioxide was sandwiched between two electrodes (above is platinum), the titanium and were divided into two parts, half is normal titanium dioxide, the other half “oxygen”, a little less several oxygen atoms. The positively charged half of the oxygen, so the current through the resistance is small, and when a current flows from one side of the lack of oxygen to the normal side, under the influence of electric field of oxygen in the “hole” will gradually move to the normal side, makes the whole piece of material used, deficency part will account for a high proportion, integral resistance can be reduced. Anyway, when the electric current from one side of the normal flow of oxygen in the side, the electric field from the back, a hole in the hypoxia resistance will follow.
Silica have so of HP is not the first to find the characteristics of the child, but because the Crossbar Latch research relationship, is the first to know it is today, and its importance in computer applications. In practical application, the two wires applied voltage to the one-way can control the state of the switch, and read the alternating current (ac) is used to read the resistance value, you can know the current state of the switch.

The future of Memristor 

Memristor is found in 2008,HP  published it in the journal “nature”,and  in 2009 proved that the Cross of the Latch system are easy to stack and form a solid memory. Current technology “switch” of each wire is about 3 nm x 3 nm, switch around the time of 1 ns, the operation speed is about 1/10 of the DRAM – was not enough to replace DRAM, but 1 cm squared 100 gigabit, 1 cm after 1 petabit (don’t forget it is to be able to stack) the incredible potential capacity, take care of flash memory is more than sufficient.
But the Crossbar Latch can be not only used to store data. Its grid design, and have switch between each intersection, means the whole grid in some extent, can be logical. In the original Crossbar Latch has been mentioned in the paper how to use grid to simulate the AND, OR AND NOT three logic gates, a combination of several grid can even make addition such operations. This is to get rid of transistors into the next generation to open a window, a lot of people think today is relative to the transistor computer by leaps, and the transistor is as big as relative to the vacuum tube by leaps. On the other hand, some people talking about the circuit from real-time adjust their own state to the possibility that meets the operation requirements. This, in combination with memory of today, representing the computation and memory circuit will co-exist at the same time, and with the need to adjust. It has completely beyond the design of this generation of computer logic, can develop toward the road, may represent the birth of a new generation of intelligent robot.
But these are the future. The goal of HP is implicit ordering, agreed to in 2013, only to produce and when the generation of Flash the same price, but the two times the capacity of today, memory device. For most people, this change is quite low – like chip process step by step to 24 nm, but for the average person, CPU or memory, flash disk has been like that long, there is no change. Just inside, have the resistance and Crossbar Latch combination represents the new progress of computer technology, may let us once again, the life of the continuation of Moore’s law, progress toward the future of the ruled by robots.

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