HP Puts the Future of Computing (memristor) On Hold

Plans by Hewlett-Packard for computers based on an exotic new electronic
device called the memristor are scaled back.

In April I wrote about an ambitious project by Hewlett-Packard to use an
electronic device for storing data called the memristor to reinvent the
basic design of computers (see "Machine Dreams"). This week HP chief
technology officer Martin Fink, who started and leads the project,
announced a rethink of the project amidst uncertainty over the
memristor's future.

Fink and other HP executives had previously estimated that they would
have the core technologies needed for the computer they dubbed "the
Machine" in testing sometime in 2016. They used the timeline at the
bottom of this post to sketch out where the project was headed.

But the New York Times reported yesterday that the project has been
"repositioned" to focus on delivering the Machine using less exotic
memory technologies–the DRAM found in most computers today and a
technology just entering production called phase change memory, which
stores data by melting a special material and controlling how it cools.

With memristors out of the picture, there's reason to doubt just how
revolutionary HP's project can be.

The main feature of the Machine's design was to be a large collection of
memristor memory chips. They would allow computers to be more powerful
and energy efficient by combining the best properties of two different
components of today's machines: the speed of the DRAM that holds data
while a processor uses it, and the capacity and ability to hold data
without power seen in storage drives based on hard disks or flash memory.

Prototypes of the Machine built with DRAM and phase change memory in the
place of memristors had always been part of the plan. But when I met
Fink and others working on the project I also heard that those
technologies would hobble the idea at the heart of the Machine.

Because DRAM can’t store data very densely and must always be powered
on, computers built around a large block of it will require a lot of
space and power. Meanwhile, phase change memory is too slow compared to
DRAM to be much use for data being worked on. When I met Stan Williams,
who leads HP's work on memristors, he dismissed the idea that any other
technology could be used to reinvent the basic design of computers as HP
wanted. Fink did a good job in this 2014 blog post of explaining why his
team believed only memristors could build the Machine.

Still, this week's climb down is not a complete surprise. Fink used the
timeline below as recently as December 2014, predicting that memristor
memory would "samplE" in 2015 and be "launched" in 2016. But a few
months later, in February of this year, he told me that sampling was
most likely in 2016–an estimate that HP's manufacturing partner SK Hynix
would not confirm. Microelectronics experts I spoke to said that it
looked to be challenging to make reliable memristors in large, dense
arrays as needed to make a memory chip.

HP now appears to be avoiding making any prediction for when the
technology will be mature. The company has not yet responded to a
request for comment.

Source:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/538121/hp-puts-the-future-of-computing-on-hold/