Scientists Create Missing Fourth Circuit Element (Memristor)

[wartomods]

Researchers at HP Labs have built the first working prototypes of an important new electronic component that may lead to instant-on PCs as well as analog computers that process information the way the human brain does.

The new component is called a memristor, or memory resistor. Up until today, the circuit element had only been described in a series of mathematical equations written by Leon Chua, who in 1971 was an engineering student studying non-linear circuits. Chua knew the circuit element should exist -- he even accurately outlined its properties and how it would work. Unfortunately, neither he nor the rest of the engineering community could come up with a physical manifestation that matched his mathematical expression.

Thirty-seven years later, a group of scientists from HP Labs has finally built real working memristors, thus adding a fourth basic circuit element to electrical circuit theory, one that will join the three better-known ones: the capacitor, resistor and the inductor.

Researchers believe the discovery will pave the way for instant-on PCs, more energy-efficient computers, and new analog computers that can process and associate information in a manner similar to that of the human brain.

According to R. Stanley Williams, one of four researchers at HP Labs' Information and Quantum Systems Lab who made the discovery, the most interesting characteristic of a memristor device is that it remembers the amount of charge that flows through it.

Indeed, Chua's original idea was that the resistance of a memristor would depend upon how much charge has gone through the device. In other words, you can flow the charge in one direction and the resistance will increase. If you push the charge in the opposite direction it will decrease. Put simply, the resistance of the devices at any point in time is a function of history of the device –- or how much charge went through it either forwards or backwards. That simple idea, now that it has been proven, will have profound effect on computing and computer science.

"Part of what's going to come out of this is something none of us can imagine yet," says Williams. "But what we can imagine in and of itself is actually pretty cool."

For one thing, Williams says these memristors can be used as either digital switches or to build a new breed of analog devices.

For the former, Williams says scientists can now think about fabricating a new type of non-volatile random access memory (RAM) – or memory chips that don't forget what power state they were in when a computer is shut off.

That's the big problem with DRAM today, he says. "When you turn the power off on your PC, the DRAM forgets what was there. So the next time you turn the power on you've got to sit there and wait while all of this stuff that you need to run your computer is loaded into the DRAM from the hard disk."

With non-volatile RAM, that process would be instantaneous and your PC would be in the same state as when you turned it off.

Scientists also envision building other types of circuits in which the memristor would be used as an analog device.

Indeed, Leon himself noted the similarity between his own predictions of the properties for a memristor and what was then known about synapses in the brain. One of his suggestions was that you could perhaps do some type of neuronal computing using memristors. HP Labs thinks that's actually a very good idea.

"Building an analog computer in which you don't use 1s and 0s and instead use essentially all shades of gray in between is one of the things we're already working on," says Williams. These computers could do the types of things that digital computers aren't very good at –- like making decisions, determining that one thing is larger than another, or even learning.

While a lot of researchers are currently trying to write a computer code that simulates brain function on a standard machine, they have to use huge machines with enormous processing power to simulate only tiny portions of the brain.

Williams and his team say they can now take a different approach: "Instead of writing a computer program to simulate a brain or simulate some brain function, we're actually looking to build some hardware based upon memristors that emulates brain-like functions," says Williams.

Such hardware could be used to improve things like facial recognition technology, and enable an appliance to essentially learn from experience, he says. In principle, this should also be thousands or millions of times more efficient than running a program on a digital computer.

The results of HP Labs teams findings will be published in a paper in today's edition of Nature. As far as when we might see memristors actually being used in actual commercial devices, Williams says the limitations are more business oriented than technological.

Ultimately, the problem is going to be related to the time and effort involved in designing a memristor circuit, he says. "The money invested in circuit design is actually much larger than building fabs. In fact, you can use any fab to make these things right now, but somebody also has to design the circuits and there's currently no memristor model. The key is going to be getting the necessary tools out into the community and finding a niche application for memristors. How long this will take is more of a business decision than a technological one."

Image: An atomic force microscope image of a simple circuit with 17 memristors lined up in a row. Each memristor has a bottom wire that contacts one side of the device and a top wire that contacts the opposite side. The devices act as 'memory resistors', with the resistance of each device depending on the amount of charge that has moved through each one. The wires in this image are 50 nm wide, or about 150 atoms in total width. Image courtesy of J. J. Yang, HP Labs.





Skynet is coming.

[free_thinkers_are_dangerous]

cool. i'd love to have been a fly on the wall when they realized they had it.

anybody else think now would be a good time to invest in HP?

[wartomods]

i recogn that

[wartomods]

i recogn that

but i dont know cause, there were already archives from 1975 regarding this technology, is something that is explained very well, other companys may not have a dificult time to reach the same... i dont know if trademark is applyable with this

[mph4ever]

thats cool, it may speed things up and makes things a lot smaller but i can't see it improving the ability to replicate brain functions, except physically, not logic. its not biological and so requires humans to tell it what to do.

[spitfirejunky]

*coming

The link is broken.

[Permanent Solution]

Interesting concept but he's talking it up to be more important than I think it is. Plus, there's more than just inductors, resistors and caps. Diodes? Transistors?

There are many solutions to SRAM and DRAM problems, and given the late arrival of this technology I'm not sure it will find applications anytime soon as most companies are busy trying to integrate the latest solutions already.

[Pastorius]

Sounds interesting, but I think nanotechnology is a more fruitful area of research. I saw something at the bottom of the article about 150 atoms wide per memristor, but I didn't really get it, seemed out of context, maybe I'm just stupid.

But my project supervisor, who is a nanotech researcher was telling me that once we master this one technique, we will be able to store a terabyte on a square inch of material. How nuts would that be!

[wartomods]

a terabyte on a square inch would be just more of the same and would not revolutionize anything at all, nanotechs have much more potential than that, and as I say memristors go just beyond working with random acess memory. The way you acess your memory is much more important than see how much information you can store in one place... I say just read the whole article

[mph4ever]

yes but it doesn't matter what physical improvements it brings, it can only improve the simulation of life, it can never help emulate life

[Pastorius]

a terabyte on a square inch would be just more of the same and would not revolutionize anything at all, nanotechs have much more potential than that, and as I say memristors go just beyond working with random acess memory. The way you acess your memory is much more important than see how much information you can store in one place... I say just read the whole article

That's only one of the applications of nanotechnology though, there are looooads of things it can help with.

How about....nanoscale grass on your mobile phone to photosynthesise and charge your battery? Estimated time until that is 40 years.

[stevensonmat2]

yes but it doesn't matter what physical improvements it brings, it can only improve the simulation of life, it can never help emulate life

I think the eventual goal is to emulate life.

[mph4ever]

I think the eventual goal is to emulate life.

do you think they can emulate life with machines?

[beastman168]

yeh, maybe they could use the grass in a car engine

[wartomods]

Just for the note memristor was built using nano technology, it was impossible to build before it

[Pastorius]

Yeah I did see that, I mentioned something about it, but I wasn't sure what exactly was going on there because it wasn't very well explained, so I thought I'd not assume anything.

[stevensonmat2]

do you think they can emulate life with machines?

Maybe not yet, but if they can it would be a simple form of life. Eventually though, and sooner than later, they will be able to replicate "life". What is our brain but a biological computer? All that we are is chemical reactions and mathematical equations occurring within the brain.

[mph4ever]

Maybe not yet, but if they can it would be a simple form of life. Eventually though, and sooner than later, they will be able to replicate "life". What is our brain but a biological computer? All that we are is chemical reactions and mathematical equations occurring within the brain.


i'm intrigued. do you think they will be able to create a personality that could be considered to be natural?

[stevensonmat2]

Certainly. Our ideas of personality and a soul are simplified terms for much more complex brain functions, which could be replicated with powerful enough technology. Look at video game AI today. They are able to create bots that make decisions based on what occurs in the game and based on their pre-determined scripts. While this might not be as complex as a person's personality system, the principles the same. They can even make bots more aggressive or defensive, both of which can be considered a personality type, simply by altering some math in the characters make up. And thats really all it comes down to; math.

[mph4ever]

thats logical, but scary and surely we cannot expect consciousness, or can we?

[stevensonmat2]

I wouldn't call it scary, I think it's exciting. And consciousness is already possible, albeit on a limited scale. Bots on games have a semblance of consciousness. They have preset reactions (instincts) and the ability to change in accordance with a given situation. They "know" certain things, and if their knowledge base was to be expanded and their processing capability was increased, then they could start making what seemed to be free choices of will. If that seems silly, just remember that our illusion of free will is just that, an illusion. We act on the same principles of process and react, just like a video game character, and our choices really aren't ours but rather the result of our brains best attempt at a decision.

[sexymuffin]

idk if complete replication of human consciousness is really possible and i like john searle's take on the issue

http://www.iep.utm.edu/c/chineser.htm

[beso negro]

Bots on games have a semblance of consciousness. They have preset reactions (instincts) and the ability to change in accordance with a given situation. They "know" certain things, and if their knowledge base was to be expanded and their processing capability was increased, then they could start making what seemed to be free choices of will. If that seems silly, just remember that our illusion of free will is just that, an illusion. We act on the same principles of process and react, just like a video game character, and our choices really aren't ours but rather the result of our brains best attempt at a decision.

The techniques used to program AI in games in completely different than what would be used to create artificial consciousness.

Neural networking is the closest thing we have to mimicking the human brain and it's not even close to replicating human consciousness nor will it ever be.

[stevensonmat2]

The techniques used to program AI in games in completely different than what would be used to create artificial consciousness.

Neural networking is the closest thing we have to mimicking the human brain and it's not even close to replicating human consciousness nor will it ever be.

Would you care to detail what exactly the techniques for creating artificial consciousness are? I really don't see such a huge gap in human consciousness and game/computer consciousness. (not an expert)

[mph4ever]

i think awareness of ones own existence is a key component of consciousness. i can't see how this can be reproduced

[stevensonmat2]

It must be able to be. It's not some magical spark that humans have been gifted from on high. It comes from functions in the brain and therefore it must be able to be replicated.

[sexymuffin]

i think awareness of ones own existence is a key component of consciousness. i can't see how this can be reproduced

it can't, nor can actual understanding. the best we can do is instruct a computer to act in a way that appears human, but the computer itself has no understanding of what it is or what it's saying. it merely utilizes the instructions we give it to accept input (a question) and formulate output (an answer), while not having the slightest clue as to what the input or output is supposed to mean.

john searle covers this issue fully in his chinese room example and further rebuttals which i posted above.

[stevensonmat2]

it can't, nor can actual understanding. the best we can do is instruct a computer to act in a way that appears human, but the computer itself has no understanding of what it is or what it's saying. it merely utilizes the instructions we give it to accept input (a question) and formulate output (an answer), while not having the slightest clue as to what the input or output is supposed to mean.


I think the missing thing for computers is a driving force. We have the motivators of living and reproducing behind every action we take, so perhaps computers simply need an underlying goal to give reason to their actions.

I can't even begin to imagine what it would take to replicate that human brain, but I think since the brain is a physical thing performing physical actions, then it (and all of it's functions) must be replicable.

[beso negro]

To stevensonmat2:
Well basically in gaming "bots" use trees to find the best solution to a problem. The are limited by time or how many steps they can see ahead. Let's look at the 8 tile game for example. The computer would create a tree like this:

http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hillclimbnk3.png

there are two levels here. there can be many more of course. An "easy" computer say could only look 2 levels ahead. And "expert" maybe 5. The computer would pick the best configuration it visited, which would be the one on the bottom left second level for the easy computer. Most puzzle games use this. IT can be used in action games as well, the only problem is figuring out how to associate numbers with a particular solution.

For action and shooting games, many things are preprogrammed action sequences or state machines. Like the walk of a soldier:
set animation "walk"
go to 0 10 0
set animation "rotate"
rotate 180
set animation "walk"
go to 0 0 0
set animation "rotate"
rotate 180

the numbers represent the axis. x,y,z;

Those parts are used to create something like patrolling behavior. Here's a simple example:
http://www.tar.hu/gamealgorithms/files/06fig02.gif

Another cool thing you see in games like Half-Life is a shared memory pool, which lets all the bots act as a team. For example what is happening to bot1, bot2 knows as well. Then each of the bot's patrol behavior's react to the data.

[stevensonmat2]

Thats interesting. So what method do people use to make decisions? I feel like our method is similar, just a lot more advanced.

[beso negro]

we use neurons which send information across the brain with synapse and stuff. Neural networking tries to mimic that but it's too limited. First off, no computer could run a programmed version of the brain, and second it's just too hard to program.

My AI teacher gave me this example:

One can program a computer to determine what is a dog and what isn't. If I show it a toothbrush it would say No, not a dog but if I showed it a dog of course it would say Yes, it is a dog. But here is the tricky part... if you showed it a cat would it say Yes, it is a dog?

It would because the differences between a cat and a dog are too subtle (disregarding the sounds they make and their differences on a molecular level). Think about it. Humans could easily see the difference. But it would be damn hard to program a computer to do it.

Maybe that's a bad example idk, but my AI teacher uses that.

[wartomods]

we use neurons which send information across the brain with synapse and stuff. Neural networking tries to mimic that but it's too limited. First off, no computer could run a programmed version of the brain, and second it's just too hard to program.

My AI teacher gave me this example:

One can program a computer to determine what is a dog and what isn't. If I show it a toothbrush it would say No, not a dog but if I showed it a dog of course it would say Yes, it is a dog. But here is the tricky part... if you showed it a cat would it say Yes, it is a dog?

It would because the differences between a cat and a dog are too subtle (disregarding the sounds they make and their differences on a molecular level). Think about it. Humans could easily see the difference. But it would be damn hard to program a computer to do it.

Maybe that's a bad example idk, but my AI teacher uses that.

thats why memristors are important

[stevensonmat2]

I've read about computers that can identify people as attractive or unattractive. Again, I think at this time we couldn't replicate the brain's functions, but I think eventually we could.

[mph4ever]

i reckon big blue was the perfect example when it played chess. it played the perfect games based on solving problems. it just examined every possibility based on the condition of the board. thing is that it never got nervous, it never got excited, it didn't have a feeling of pride when it won, it felt nothing, it had no awareness of its own existence, no consciousness

question is, will they ever be able to create a computing kernal that will be conscious of its existence and provide feedback to alter its actions based on its perception of situations, not what it is told by others

[wartomods]

we use neurons which send information across the brain with synapse and stuff. Neural networking tries to mimic that but it's too limited. First off, no computer could run a programmed version of the brain, and second it's just too hard to program.

My AI teacher gave me this example:

One can program a computer to determine what is a dog and what isn't. If I show it a toothbrush it would say No, not a dog but if I showed it a dog of course it would say Yes, it is a dog. But here is the tricky part... if you showed it a cat would it say Yes, it is a dog?

It would because the differences between a cat and a dog are too subtle (disregarding the sounds they make and their differences on a molecular level). Think about it. Humans could easily see the difference. But it would be damn hard to program a computer to do it.

Maybe that's a bad example idk, but my AI teacher uses that.

that is a bad example, and it is very fallacious... And as you talked about molecular level, see the concept of quantum computers

[wartomods]

the more deep i study biochemics the more i understand technology

[wartomods]

You people are just thinking in AI in terms of simple algorythms

[stevensonmat2]

i reckon big blue was the perfect example when it played chess. it played the perfect games based on solving problems. it just examined every possibility based on the condition of the board. thing is that it never got nervous, it never got excited, it didn't have a feeling of pride when it won, it felt nothing, it had no awareness of its own existence, no consciousness

question is, will they ever be able to create a computing kernal that will be conscious of its existence and provide feedback to alter its actions based on its perception of situations, not what it is told by others

How do we know whether or not machines like big blue have any sort of consciousness? And I they can make a machine that alters actions based on it's own perception, it's just dictated by the parameters we set. (but we react the same way)

[beso negro]

i reckon big blue was the perfect example when it played chess. it played the perfect games based on solving problems. it just examined every possibility based on the condition of the board. thing is that it never got nervous, it never got excited, it didn't have a feeling of pride when it won, it felt nothing, it had no awareness of its own existence, no consciousness

That's not artificial intelligence though. All those moves were pre programmed. The computer didn't learn or create any moves. It just searched for the best in it's library of moves.

Deep Blue btw :p

[wartomods]

That's not artificial intelligence though. All those moves were pre programmed. The computer didn't learn or create any moves. It just searched for the best in it's library of moves.

Deep Blue btw :p

arent your moves already programmed, determined by all the things you gathered in the past and by the state of the environment

[mph4ever]

That's not artificial intelligence though. All those moves were pre programmed. The computer didn't learn or create any moves. It just searched for the best in it's library of moves.

Deep Blue btw :p


sorry, i was referring to its god, its creator, to the maker ;)

and i agree with you. it was pure programming, process of elimination to decide the best move. i say elimination because, unlike a human mind, blue had to consider every single possibility before conclusion, humans don't have that hang up, we have gut feelings

[beso negro]

arent your moves already programmed, determined by all the things you gathered in the past and by the state of the environment

Yes. But we weren't programmed with these experiences when we were born, unlike Deep Blue.

True AI would involve computers kind of programming themselves. Of course we would have to give them a head start.

[mph4ever]

looking for stuff as you do, i came across this little piece


It may be an idea ahead of its time. People have been jailed for kidnapping or wrecking computers, but it’s the rights of humans, not machines, that are being protected. Trashing your own computer maliciously or another’s accidentally is no crime. When a computer forges checks using bogus data supplied by human accomplices, the people, not the machine, are charged with the crime.

But how long can the law lag behind technology? Knowledgeable observers predict consumer robotics will be a multibillion-dollar growth industry by 2000. Clever personal robots capable of climbing stairs, washing dishes, and accepting spoken commands in plain English should be widely available by 2005. By the turn of the century the robot population may number in the millions.

By 2010, most new homes will offer a low-cost domestic robot option. This “homebot” will be a remote-controlled peripheral of a computer brain buried somewhere in the house. Homebot software will include: (1) applications programs to make your robot behave as a butler, maid, cook, teacher, sexual companion, or whatever; and (2) acquired data such as family names, vital statistics and preferences, a floor map of the house, food and beverage recipes, past family events, and desired robot personality traits. If a family moves, it would take its software with it to load into the domestic system at the new house. The new homebot’s previous mind would be erased and overwritten with the personality of the family’s old machine.


1985, oh dear, i think i am going to see if i can send the author an email, see how they feel about memristors!

heres the full piece

http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm

[wartomods]

looking for stuff as you do, i came across this little piece



1985, oh dear, i think i am going to see if i can send the author an email, see how they feel about memristors!

heres the full piece

http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/LegalRightsOfRobots.htm

negged

[mph4ever]

sorry, that does not compute

[sexymuffin]

I think the missing thing for computers is a driving force. We have the motivators of living and reproducing behind every action we take, so perhaps computers simply need an underlying goal to give reason to their actions.

but you're ignoring that anything we give a computer, be it an artificial consciousness, a need to reproduce, an urge to communicate with others, are merely scripts or instructions that can lead to a computer imitating, but not understanding a human mind.

ask me a question with chinese letters, give me more chinese letters and instructions in english on how to arrange the letters, and then i will sit down and arrange the letters following the instructions and give a perfect chinese answer without having any understanding of chinese.

a computer works with symbols we give it and instructions on how to arrange these symbols without having any idea as to what these symbols represent. type 2+2 in a calculator and you get 4, but the calculator will never be able to understand what 2 and 4 represent, or why any combination of symbols we give it produce whatever combination of symbols the computer is instructed to produce.

[je suis un beau chapeau]

i was playing the sims and i kept telling him to go to the bathroom but he didnt so he peed on the kitchen floor looks like computers have free will to me

[beso negro]

Interesting concept but he's talking it up to be more important than I think it is. Plus, there's more than just inductors, resistors and caps. Diodes? Transistors?

they were referring to passive electrical elements i believe. obviously a diode isn't one and a transistor is considered active and not passive.

thats why memristors are important

you're right i should have read the article before i posted stuff. memristors will change computing because we can do things between 1 and 0.

[descendents1]

beso negro had the only posts worth reading itt so far

This is pretty interesting. Sounds like this will open plenty of new doors to alternative approaches to circuitry, but this isn't like a step above the resistor, capacitor, or inductor, this seems like it's on the same level. Will increase versatility but isn't holy **** material. Definitely not worth investing lots of money in hp, they're just proving once again that their R&D kicks ***.

[McP3000]

i was playing the sims and i kept telling him to go to the bathroom but he didnt so he peed on the kitchen floor looks like computers have free will to me
over 9000 points to gryffindor

[ashman]

It's gonna be years before we see any kind of real application for this. Look at Carbon nanotubes; there were a huge break through a few years ago and they're not readily available in consumer electronics (or anything for that matter).

[bradc1988]

Dammit I've only just gotten my head around Ls, Cs and Rs and now they're introducing another one! Lame.

[McP3000]

You won't need to understand them...soon the computer chips will understand you...and control you

[wartomods]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8e/HUARLogo.jpg/347px-HUARLogo.jpg

[McP3000]

i dont get it

[Pastorius]

It's gonna be years before we see any kind of real application for this. Look at Carbon nanotubes; there were a huge break through a few years ago and they're not readily available in consumer electronics (or anything for that matter).

It's still not been discovered how to grow them reliably and to control the rate/shape of their growth.

[free_thinkers_are_dangerous]

this isn't like a step above the resistor, capacitor, or inductor, this seems like it's on the same level.

yeah, that's like waking up one morning and discovering a force "only" as fundamental as electricity and gravity. it's still pretty huge.

[Mr. Ron]

So besides computers, what kind of an impact can this have on everyday life?

[ashman]

It's still not been discovered how to grow them reliably and to control the rate/shape of their growth.

I believe memristors have the same kind of problem.

[Permanent Solution]

they were referring to passive electrical elements i believe. obviously a diode isn't one and a transistor is considered active and not passive.
BJTs and diodes are passive. Passive devices absorb energy and active devices create energy...most circuit elements are passive.
So besides computers, what kind of an impact can this have on everyday life?
It would affect a whole range of electronics, not just computers. Cell phones would be another big application.

[mph4ever]

will it improve computing power? as in performance.

it will surely not make any difference to the way we program computers since this is a hardware innvovation and instructions are software based

[1338 h4x0r]

will it improve computing power? as in performance.

it will surely not make any difference to the way we program computers since this is a hardware innvovation and instructions are software based

if it improves performance, sure it would ... because it allows more room for abstraction

something like Python or Haskell would be unthinkable or at least incredibly slow on the iron of the sixties. the concepts embodied in Lisp were academic curiosities until, IIRC, the late seventies / early eighties (?)

[mph4ever]

but i fail to see how it will change the programming and hence the use. i know computers like very few, i understand everything that takes place between my fingers and yours, but i fail to see how a new electronic device, a memristor, a resistor with a memory of the current levels that passed through it, which we can emulate in software anyways, can improve the capbility, functionality of a computer. i understand how performance for other devices maybe improved since moore's law is being exhausted based on the three primary components, but i don't get how this will significantly enhance software applications, apart from speed

[beso negro]

BJTs and diodes are passive. Passive devices absorb energy and active devices create energy...most circuit elements are passive.

but a transistor is just a switch right?

and a diode nothing more than a voltage-controlled switch.

basically they don't affect the properties of electrons so physicists don't put them in the same category as the others.

[1338 h4x0r]

but i fail to see how it will change the programming and hence the use.

I don't know if memresistors are a quantum leap, but compare an average Intel machine of today to a PDP-11. The programming and programs available on these platforms are clearly quite different. Just like the PDP-11 could do more than a Pascaline.

[Permanent Solution]

will it improve computing power? as in performance.

it will surely not make any difference to the way we program computers since this is a hardware innvovation and instructions are software based
Um programming is heavily dependent on the hardware it exists on. C is C, but assembly programming varies greatly depending on the hardware available.
but a transistor is just a switch right?

and a diode nothing more than a voltage-controlled switch.

basically they don't affect the properties of electrons so physicists don't put them in the same category as the others.
Wot?

A diode and a BJT especially, and to a degree MOSFETs, definitely affect electron movement as much as a cap or inductor. I don't feel like giving a lesson in semiconductor physics but the voltage applied to a diode affects the drawn current by the movement of the electrons and holes in the n-type and p-type substrates, just as the change in voltage across a cap determines the current.

[beso negro]

i see what you are saying but diodes and transistors don't affect the electromagnetic properties of the electrons. yea of course they affect the direction or layout of the circuit.

look at the four fundamental circuit variables: current, voltage, charge, and flux. transistors don't provide a function to relate any of them. but a resistor provides a function to relate voltage and current/a capacitor provides a function to relate charge and voltage/ and an inductor provides a function to relate flux and current.

[Permanent Solution]

i see what you are saying but diodes and transistors don't affect the electromagnetic properties of the electrons. yea of course they affect the direction or layout of the circuit.

look at the four fundamental circuit variables: current, voltage, charge, and flux. transistors don't provide a function to relate any of them. but a resistor provides a function to relate voltage and current/a capacitor provides a function to relate charge and voltage/ and an inductor provides a function to relate flux and current.
What do you mean by electromagnetic properties of the electron?

In the sense that for a resistor you have V=IR, or for a cap you have i=C dv/dt, you have a more complex, but more or less equivalently useful equation for a BJT. I struggle to call those 3 devices the only basis for circuitry because you can't model a BJT as a combination of them. A BJT is a fundamental element in that there's no simpler set of elements that can be used to model its behavior.

[beso negro]

you can't model a BJT as a combination of them. A BJT is a fundamental element in that there's no simpler set of elements that can be used to model its behavior.

now there is though :p

you have a more complex, but more or less equivalently useful equation for a BJT

what is this and does it include i, V, flux or R?

[Permanent Solution]

now there is though :p
I'm not familiar with the equations related to the mem-resistor, but based on the conceptual understanding i have, they wouldn't model the voltage-dependent current source in a BJT.

edit: untypable here hah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjt#Ebers.E2.80.93Moll_model

[beso negro]

From my understanding, a memrisitor would have an equation like this:

Integral of current dt = total flux linkage

and flux linkage is the integral of the Emf or V x some type of constant.

[mph4ever]

I don't know if memresistors are a quantum leap, but compare an average Intel machine of today to a PDP-11. The programming and programs available on these platforms are clearly quite different. Just like the PDP-11 could do more than a Pascaline.

i worked with pdp-11s, we used them for modelling, i am not even too sure how long they have beeen retired in some facilities. they could do more, the same way as my phone could do more than a gould 77 and it won't be long until it can do more than an early as400.

but they do more by processing things faster, and down sizing physically, being able to manipulate more data quicker. some of the claims about how this is a major leap forward for computing must only be down to the fact that a smaller machine will be able to do more than the big ones we use presently

is it implied that the faster the machine then the better it can fool us into thinking it is conscious?

[1338 h4x0r]

is it implied that the faster the machine then the better it can fool us into thinking it is conscious?

Well that depends. Someone has to come up with a good AI. It would probably help to have a more able machine because some algorithms require a lot of processor power and memory.

[beso negro]

is it implied that the faster the machine then the better it can fool us into thinking it is conscious?

well from what i'm reading in the article, memristors will be the driving force behind analog computers. No digital computer will ever have real AI, but there is hope for analog.

so yea i would assume programming an analog computer would be much different than what we do today.

[1338 h4x0r]

I got the impression from Johnny von Neumann that digital computers are superior.

[mph4ever]

well from what i'm reading in the article, memristors will be the driving force behind analog computers. No digital computer will ever have real AI, but there is hope for analog.

so yea i would assume programming an analog computer would be much different than what we do today.

surely software can enable digital computers to perform anything that an analogue computer can do just by creating a virtual analogue machine

i think the point they are getting at is that we use computer that are based on 1s and 0s. this will have impact of allowing us to have 0, 0.1, 1.2, 1.3.........all the way to 1 or any other number we wish to divide 1 by. and it will remember its last level of charge. imagine we could measure down to the lowest level of electric charge and then multiply that by whatever number of times it takes to make up one unit of charge. visually i can see an ever changing array of leds on something like a graphic equaliser. for eight bits of data, we now have massive variation in logic

0.0 ¦ 1 ¦ 2 ¦ 3..........................¦ 8 ¦
0.1 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ x..........................¦ o ¦
0.2 ¦ x ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.3 ¦ o ¦ x ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.4 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ x ¦
0.5 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.6 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.7 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.8 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
0.9 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦
1.0 ¦ o ¦ o ¦ o..........................¦ o ¦

this has the function of how the brainn works, i don't understand enough about the electronics of the brain to say yes or no but i take their word for it. ya gotta have faith. so we think we can physically emulate the brain, but we aint never going to be able to write an OS that is conscious of itself.

most people think that the picture on a crt tube is constant but we know its not, that it actually flickers at a rate that the human eye cannot observe. perhaps these new computing devices based on memristors, can cheat us into thinking they have consciousness but they never will