HP claims to have invented a new type of circuit element that can be used in the very dense cross-bar circuit they have been working on for several years. If this article is more than just hype it represents something very important. For the full article go to <http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207403521&pr intable=true&printable=true> http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207403521&pri ntable=true&printable=true . Below are some of the excerpts most relevant to this the potential of this technology to AGI.
"The long-sought after memristor--the "missing link" in electronic circuit theory--has been invented by Hewlett Packard Senior Fellow R. Stanley Williams at HP Labs (Palo Alto, Calif.) .. "When Chua wrote his seminal paper, he used mathematics to deduce the existence of a fourth circuit element type after resistors, capacitors and inductors, which he called a memristor, because it "remembers" changes in the current passing through it by changing its resistance.. "This new circuit element solves many problems with circuitry today--since it improves in performance as you scale it down to smaller and smaller sizes," said Chua. "Memristors will enable very small nanoscale devices to be made without generating all the excess heat that scaling down transistors is causing today." "HP has already tested the material in its ultra-high-density crossbar switches, which use nanowires to pack a record 100 Gbits onto a single die--compared with 16 Gbits for the highest density flash memory chips extant. . "As Chua predicted, Williams is already thinking about creating new types of devices with HP's crossbar architecture beyond a simple memory device. "If we push current through it hard and fast, it acts like a digital device, but if we run current through it gently and slowly it acts as an analog device," said Williams. "We are already designing new types of circuits in both the digital and analog domains using our crossbar architecture. In the analog domain, we want to build memristor-based devices that operate in a manner similar to how the synapse works in the brain--neuron-like analog computational elements that could perform control functions where decisions must be made involving comparisons as to whether something is larger or smaller than something else. We are not building a neural network yet, but we think that using the memristor in its analog mode with our crossbar is a pretty good representation of a neural net." "Later in 2008, HP promises to begin releasing details of how its memristor material works with its already perfected nanoscale crossbar switch architecture in these various types of circuits. ." ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
