Memristor Hardware Analysis - Research Paper Example

of the Paper] [First Contents Introduction History of Memristor ……………………………………………………………………………. 1 Analogy of Memristor ……………………………………………………………………………1 Characteristics of Memristor ……………………………………………………………………. 2 Development of Memristor ……………………………………………………………………… 3 Pros and Cons …………………………………………………………………………………… 3 Evaluation ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………... 6 [Title] Computers are taking on fast. One day they may become very much like humans. History of Memristor In the year 1971, Dr. Leon O. Chua, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley and widely recognized as the father of nonlinear circuit theory and cellular neural networks (CNN), made an official information known to the public a debatable paper telling that an element named “Memristor” is to be included as the fourth fundamental circuit element together with the other elements namely resistor, capacitor and inductor. This paper is very important and had a strong influence in the future which was entitled “Memristor – The missing circuit element”.  In his paper, Prof. Chua demonstrated a number of principles to expose that there was a ‘missing’ two-terminal circuit element from the family of “fundamental” passive devices such as resistor, capacitor and inductor. He named it as “Memristor” because it is a resistor with memory. He said that memristor exists in order to relate the flux in a circuit to the charge but during that time people couldn’t figure out what physics could give rise between flux and charge. People tried to find the causality of the two to find out their relationship. In the mathematical proof of Chua it just shows flux and charge are equal which means that any physical interaction that makes the mathematical equation true gives rise to memristor. He mathematically proved that memristors had features that are not able to generate by any mixture of the other three elements. Analogy of Memristor This is an analogy of memristors to fully understand it basing from the article HP Memristor FAQ: 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 (“HP Memristor FaQ”). The analogy provided was a very easy and understandable one in order to fully understand how memristors work comparing to the resistor. This gives us depth detail. Characteristics of Memristor The characteristic of memristor is when an AC voltage is applied to the device, the current-voltage (IV) plot is a Lissajous figure, it is the curve formed by the combination of two oscillations that are perpendicular to each other. The most commonly observed current-voltage trace is a ‘figure 8’, or a ‘pinched hysteresis loop or a bow tie’ for which the current (I) is zero when the voltage (V) is zero (Menon, “HP’s Memristor on a Chip”). The incapacity to copy the features of a memristor with the other passive circuit elements is what makes the memristor involving. The memristor executes similarly to a resistor, but it the only difference is it able to change its resistance to the amount and direction of the voltage used. One characteristics of a memristor presented is when there is no power supplied to the memristor, it can still ‘remember’ its resistance. Development of Memristor Decades later, the HP team, lead by Stan Williams, a senior research fellow at HP, was the first to realize that the hysteresis that was discovered in the current – voltage curves of vast scope of materials and structures was the outcome of memristance. The team continued the discovery in order to develop an elementary circuit model that was based on the mathematical equations of Chua for the memristor which was soon able them to create the first hybrid memristor-transistor chip. The HP researchers had come into conclusion that memristors are both processor and storage wherein they act much like synapses in the human brain. An online film stated that “memristors are a supercharger for a transistor-integrated circuit. All of these circuits are hybrids with both transistors and memristors” (Williams, “Finding the Missing Memristor”). They then gained a better idea of how memristors operate and planned to build a type of memory. This type of memory is called ReRAM, a nonvolatile, which means devices can retain their data after the power supply is turned off. This is in contrast to DRAM, wherein when the power is cut, the data stored is lost. Williams’ assessment was HP’s memristor technology could be commercially available by the middle of 2013. Pros and Cons There are numbers of Pros and only one Cons in memristor technology which were proved by the HP researchers and some analysts. Here are the Pros: 1. Memristor could ultimately replace RAM, flash and disk and make computers more intelligent by tracking data it has retained. It is a universal nonvolatile memory. 2. It could allow computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns of data it has collected, similar to human brains collecting and understanding a series of events. 3. A memristor circuit requires lower voltage and less time to turn on than competitive memory like DRAM and flash. This is because it uses less voltage and less time, of course, it uses much less power. 4. Denser cells also allow memristor circuits to store more data than flash memory. 5. Memristors can perform logic. Today, memory and computing functions are done separately on a chip and a logic chip. You could send your program to where the data is in the memory, perform the computation locally and then just send the data out. 6. It flattens the CPU memory hierarchy divide. With memristors you can decide if you want some block to be memory, a switching network, or logic. Williams claims that dynamically changing memristors between memory and logic operations constitutes a new computing paradigm enabling calculations to be performed in the same chips where data is stored, rather than in a specialized central processing unit. 7. It learns because one property of the memristor is to mimic neurons and can learn without supervision. Here is the Con: 1. Memristors require change. They are not just a plug compatible technology. It will take a system redesign. This means that it will require a lot of money and time for the memristor circuit design. Evaluation of the Hardware Basing from the researches done, if memristors have the capability to retain the data then there is the possibility that when a computer is infected with a virus or is not properly functioning, then the effect would be the memristors may cause the computer to keep rebooting with the same problem because of the memory will not be lost after reboot. The other problem that was presented might be in the case of memristor’s ability to learn from pattern; since one of the characteristics is it has the ability to learn by itself. In case bad pattern is present at an early stage, the computer’s problem could grow worse and worse at a rapid rate. On the other hand, if the memristors will get to the market timely and the price is well, it could change the face of personal electronics. There will be a great change for the flash memory industry alone. The devices using memristor will be smaller and more powerful. Conclusion The mathematical foundations of electrons predict the existence of the fourth fundamental electronic device, the memristor, which remains an exciting and unusual piece of kit. The simplicity, cheapness to make, can be operated quickly and at low power and the ability to store information even when the power is switched off are the reasons why great things are expected of them and those different kinds of plans are being planned to build them into future generations of microchips. The HP researcher are trying to develop memristor in a computer which proves that one day we might be dealing with devices that process information in the same way as the human brain. I had come up to the idea that in these case memristors could be applied in some appliances that ‘learn’ from experiences and they could be used in common devices for unbelievable storage. Memristors will change everything! Works Cited Hayes, Brian. “The Memristor.” American Scientist. American Scientist: The Magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Mar – April 2011. PDF file. Hoff, Todd. “How will Memristors Change Everything?.” High Scalability: Building bigger, faster, more reliable websites. Possibility Outpost. 5 May 2010. Web. 8 Oct 2011. HP Labs. HP Memristor FAQ, 2009. Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Web. 7 Oct 2011. Menon, Anuradha. “HP’s Memristor on a Chip.” TFOT: The Future of Things. The Future of Things., 18 Dec. 2009. Web. 8 Oct 2011. Niccolai, James. “HP advances next-gen ‘memristor’ memory technology.” Computerworld Daily. Computerworld Inc. 15 May 2011. Web. 8 Oct 2011. Williams, R. Stanley. “Finding the Missing Memristor.” 21 Jan 2010. YouTube. 7 Oct 2011. Read More