April 30, 2008
Wired presents first glimpse at our new overlords
The Wired Gadget Lab has an interesting article up about a new, fourth electronic circuit element, the memristor, which was originally theorized by an engineering student back in 1971.
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.
Could this be the first step towards a neural net processor? A learning computer? Sarah Conor?
Posted by Aaron on April 30, 2008, 3:21 pm permalink top | general
Skynet!
Maybe it’s the beginning of the Matrix? I wonder who would win between Skynet and Deus Ex Machina?
I guess only one thing is certain, we would lose!