A New Development in Information Technology - Research Paper Example

 A new development in information technology Memristor R&D department at HP (Hewlett-Packard) have develop a new dimension of memory circuit that was theoretically defined 37 years ago. This new advancement in the field of Information Technology is capable of replacing RAM and tracking data it has maintained. ‘Memristor’, the new name for technology, is capable of performing similar to the human brain, with the power of decision making through learned behaviors, data and patterns. For example, memristor can tell the heating time for different sort of foods to the microwave through the information it had collected by time. The memristor circuit runs on lower voltage/time ratio if compared with DRAM, flash and similar competitive memory. This implies that memristor will consume less power than flash memory with denser cells. HP has designed a number of prototypes to elaborate the working and efficiency of memristor. According to William, head researcher at HP, this invention is the confirmation of concepts that were emerging for the past 40 years.( Jim Walker (2010). Scientifically, memristor is considered the fourth element in electronic circuit design after capacitor, resistor and inductor. It took nearly 150 years for memristor to appear in practical or physical form. The fact that memristor’s discovery is considered a milestone is due to the reason that the properties of this element cannot be replaced by the combination of any of the three circuit’s unit. Therefore memristor is as essential to electronic circuit as photon is to physics. Late in 1971, a professor at University of California, Leon Chua, hypothesized that a memristor would have properties much similar to the ‘synapse’ in the neuron system of brain. This part of the brain control and transmits signals between two neurons and gets stronger after each signal. This type of behavior was never witnessed before in any element. HP cannot and is not trying to make memristor as capable of functioning as the human brain, but trying to built a machine that have slightly different performance than today’s computers. The experimentation was created by applying charge to the blocks of titanium dioxide circuit. The resistance of memristor was determined by the quantity of current flowing through the circuit. The essential and most promising part of memristor is that the memory retains the information even when the flow of current through the circuit has stopped. The new developed prototype is designed and will work for the academia. Later after five years HP plans to market this semi-conductor device. The technology The memristor is an electronic circuitry component whose resistance varies with the time as current flows through it. The memristor has an additional quality to preserve its last state before the current went off. Memristor is categorized as an analogue memory circuit. When combined with transistors in the form of a hybrid chip, memristor are capable of immensely improving chip’s performance without varying the size of the transistors. Memristor’s are supposedly the savior of Andy Moore’s Law for at least another 50 years. Memristor might also lead us to the development of computer architecture with working principles similar to that of the human brain. HP’s memristor’s prototypes have proven their worth by showing the performance with both logic and storage operations. With memristor the computation will be performed much closer to the storage layers. This computational benefit will empower companies to built devices that could perform faster in real time. The obvious consequence after the expected release of memristor in 2014 is the replacement of memristor with DRAM, flash and even hard drives. This is due to the reason that memristor doubles the space or capacity of the device while keeping its prize same as other storage mediums. HP got into researching and developing memristor because of its usage of technologies like servers, mobiles, computers and cloud computing and with growing marketplace it needed to keep boost up HP’s performance with keeping low prize lines. Memristor got its name from “memory resistor” because of its historical significance. It’s a two-terminal device whose resistance depends on the current, polarity, magnitude and the voltage applied to it by the length of time. Memristor have the capability to remember the last bit of information it had before going ‘off’. This valuable information remains in the circuit until the next connection, whether the next operation is after an hour or a year. Memristor have the ability to control resistance with the varying flow of current. If the flow of current approaches to have two-dimensional value memristor “freezes” until the current turned back on. This freezing ability suits memristor to fit in computer architecture. This quality of memristor to store different resistance values makes it compatible of acting like a non-volatile memory. This can easily recover your lost files after you reboot your computer. Benefits Similar to a resistor, memristor would create and maintain careful flow of electrical current across any device but it can remember charges even it has lost power. This would allow it to have retainable computer memory and better store information. HP, in May 2008 announced that it had built a memristor within the company’s research labs. The benefits of this device will be seen in houses, PCs, Smartphone, tablets and everywhere around us. The memristor is the cornerstone for efficient, energetic and cheaper technology paving our way for the future. HP has recently partnered with Hynix to produce hardware devices with memristor rather than the current work on flash memory. Hynix has a lot of new responsibilities and duties to efficiently launch and mobilize this new technology. Hynix have started market modeling and research to put in best use for memristor. (Highscalability 2010) With memristor the cost of computation will go down drastically. In enterprises working with cloud computing, these lowering of prize rates will reach the consumer within no more than 5 years, facilitating the customer and initiating a new world of cut-throat competition. Private clouds and enterprises running such facilities will get cheaper by day, as well as the cost of ownership will fall per server-basis. Businesses will get the benefit of more storage capabilities for the bulk of their data bases with technology of memristor. This functionality will also have effects on supercomputing models, with the increase in number of experiments performed per unit time, more productive and enthralling results will be at our doorstep. This will implicitly have implications for humanity in the form of better research and development, better communication, better weather prediction and for science. The future The memristor will be cheaper and denser than the flash memory. This technology might remove the usage of RAM chips that only performs in real time without a bit of AI. This may lead to low-cost transistorized computers that run on your palm while at the same time are much faster than your office’s A’s computers. Maybe with memristor we’ll be able to develop a totally new type of computer, that could read a number of electrical states rather than just on and off or 0 and 1. These memristor based computers will run complex tasks in dynamic states with analogue compatibility. (Professional Website Redesigning (2011).  The obvious question is that with such benefits that are capable of revolutionizing our future, why HP has yet not handed these device to the world? Researchers with memristor say that prototypes are capable of capturing the market; the only reason is the marketing barriers that are delaying its release. Memristor are expected to replace DRAM and hard drives by 2014-2016. While in the case of memristor based analogue computers to reach common man, it might take another 20 years. With researchers like Williams at HP, we’ll reach next level of heights for our ability to balance RAM, disk drives and flash in the upcoming couple of years. Memristor has the best in time qualities for all storage devices, with the power and speed comparable to DRAM cells and lifetime potential as the hard disk. Researchers at HP are working hard to increase the lifetime of memristor, which is currently same as flash’s life. Eventually with the disclosure of DRAM and disks CD’s and DVD’s will be seen nowhere in the market. This is the future’s word for non-volatile memory. Memristor will improve the working of RAM, designing it counter unnecessary rebooting and analysis of drive’s data. Analogue memristor’s will change our concept of backup and rebooting data. Engineers at Taiwan has also invented a tiny low-power circuit working basically on memristor with capabilities to improve the security in cases of data transmission on the internet and Near Field Communication services offered by Smartphone. This security system will work on transactions that would be depending on generating random numbers, with today’s digital circuits. However it’s difficult to function today’s circuits to perform finer with completely random numbers. An issue by IEEE Electronic Device Letters explained that the new memristor circuits quickly splits out true random numbers while using lower energy consumption techniques. (DEXTER JOHNSON 2011) Memristor and RRAM’s store memory as resistance rather than charge. They are developed by baking a resistive material in between two electrodes. The amount of voltage can increase or decrease the device’s functionality according to the user’s wish. Conclusion With memristor, writing application will benefit developers with low cost and the ability to construct applications through remaining and looking for innovate yet new opportunities. The question is: Will memristor craft it possible to make extremely integrated devices with fewer parts yet lower power consumption. Memristor would revolutionize the inventory, the technology and embedded systems in terms of applicability. References highscalability (2010). How Will Memristors Change Everything? . [ONLINE] Available at: http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/5/how-will-memristors-change-everything.html. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. DEXTER JOHNSON (2011). Mapping of Memristor Could Speed Its Commercialization. [ONLINE] Available at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/mapping-of-memristor-could-speed-its-commercialization. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. DEXTER JOHNSON (2011). Memristors Go Biological. [ONLINE] Available at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/memristors-go-biological. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Professional Website Redesigning (2011). Memristors – ‘the future of computing storage and memory’. [ONLINE] Available at: http://alexandreday.blogspot.com/2012/07/memristors-future-of-computing-storage.html. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. ke5frf (2009). future of memristors. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.electro-tech-online.com/general-electronics-chat/98831-future-memristors.html. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Jim Walker (2010). Memristors and the future. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nobeliefs.com/memristor.htm. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Discover Magazine (2010). Coming Soon to Save Moore’s Law: Memristors. [ONLINE] Available at: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/09/01/coming-soon-to-save-moores-law-memristors/. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Sascha Vongehr (2012). Detractors Not Grasping The Memristor. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/detractors_not_grasping_memristor-93011. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. MASSIMILIANO VERSACE, BEN CHANDLER (2010). MoNETA: A Mind Made from Memristors. [ONLINE] Available at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Jack Clark (2012). Memristors' one-year delay will hit IT in the wallet. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.zdnet.com/memristors-one-year-delay-will-hit-it-in-the-wallet-7000000586/. [Last Accessed 16-09-2012]. Read More