For nearly 40 years, scientists have speculated that basic electrical circuits have a natural ability to remember things even when the power is switched off. They just couldn?? find it.
Now researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) have proven them right, with a discovery they hope will lead to memory chips that store more data but consume far less power than those found in today?? personal computers and other digital devices.
The newly discovered circuit element ??called a memristor ??could enable cellphones that can go weeks or longer without a charge, PCs that start up instantly and laptops that retain your session information long after the battery dies.
It also could challenge flash memory, which is now widely used in portable electronics because of its ability to retain information even when power is off. Chips incorporating the HP discovery would be faster, suck up less power and take up far less space than today?? flash.
??t certainly looks promising,??said Wolfgang Porod, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame and director of the university?? Center for Nano Science and Technology.
Whether ??t?? going to be 100 times better or 1,000 times better [than today?? flash], it?? very hard to say at this point,??he said. Scientists have suspected since the 1970s that along with the three well-known elements of a basic circuit ??the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor ??a fourth fundamental building block is possible.
The memristor built by HP Labs researchers and reported in yesterday?? scientific journal Nature is made with a layer of titanium dioxide sandwiched between two metal electrodes.
The researchers discovered that the amount of resistance it exerts depends on how much electric charge had previously passed through it.
That characteristic gives the memristor an innate ability to remember the amount of charge that has flowed through it long after the power to it is turned off. That means the circuit itself can be built with a memory function baked in.
Otherwise, data have to be stored in power-hungry transistors configured for storage. That also takes up valuable real estate on microprocessors or requires separate memory chips.
Some outside researchers, however, said more study is required before the memristor upsets the memory business. The HP Labs team said commercial viability is at least ?? few years??away.
??hese structures are going to be very small. It?? obvious to me one could make very dense memory out of them, but how it could compete against other memory like flash remains to be seen,??said Porod, who was not involved in the HP research.
Leon Chua (?∪???, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer sciences department at the University of California, Berkeley, published a paper in 1971 theorizing that it should be possible to build such a structure.
Over the years, researchers observed behavior that seemed to suggest circuits possessed this ability, but they either dismissed it as a fluke or didn?? realize the significance of the observation.
Stan Williams, a senior fellow at HP Labs and one of the four researchers on the Nature paper, said his team was able to identify the behavior and build a structure to harness its power because the effect is more apparent ??and gets stronger ??as the wiring in the circuits gets smaller and smaller.
Chua, who wrote the first paper on the topic when he was a new professor at Berkeley, is now 71 years old and says he?? nearing retirement from the university.
?? never thought I?? live long enough to see this happen,??Chua said with a laugh.
???? thrilled because it?? almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it?? fundamental,??he said.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
REASSURANCE: The US said Taiwan’s interests would not be harmed during the talk and that it remains steadfast in its support for the nation, the foreign minister said US President Donald Trump on Friday said he would bring up Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) during a meeting on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in South Korea this week. “I will be talking about Taiwan [with Xi],” Trump told reporters before he departed for his trip to Asia, adding that he had “a lot of respect for Taiwan.” “We have a lot to talk about with President Xi, and he has a lot to talk about with us. I think we’ll have a good meeting,” Trump said. Taiwan has long been a contentious issue between the US and China.
GLOBAL PROJECT: Underseas cables ‘are the nervous system of democratic connectivity,’ which is under stress, Member of the European Parliament Rihards Kols said The government yesterday launched an initiative to promote global cooperation on improved security of undersea cables, following reported disruptions of such cables near Taiwan and around the world. The Management Initiative on International Undersea Cables aims to “bring together stakeholders, align standards, promote best practices and turn shared concerns into beneficial cooperation,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said at a seminar in Taipei. The project would be known as “RISK,” an acronym for risk mitigation, information sharing, systemic reform and knowledge building, he said at the seminar, titled “Taiwan-Europe Subsea Cable Security Cooperation Forum.” Taiwan sits at a vital junction on
RSS