University of Massachusetts researchers have successfully made a 2 nanometer individually addressable memristors. It is capable of being mass-produced in conventional fabs. This could be great for neuromorphic computing and AI in general.
This should lead to high-density memristor arrays with low power consumption for both memory and unconventional computing applications.
There were difficulties in making highly ordered and highly conductive nanoelectrode arrays. They developed “nanofins” which are metallic nanostructures with very high height-to-width ratio. This vastly reduced resistance, as the electrodes.
Nature Nanotechnology – Memristor crossbar arrays with 6-nm half-pitch and 2-nm critical dimension
Abstract
The memristor is a promising building block for next-generation non-volatile memory artificial neural networks and bio-inspired computing systems. Organizing small memristors into high-density crossbar arrays is critical to meet the ever-growing demands in high-capacity and low-energy consumption, but this is challenging because of difficulties in making highly ordered conductive nanoelectrodes. Carbon nanotubes, graphene nanoribbons and dopant nanowires have potential as electrodes for discrete nanodevices but unfortunately these are difficult to pack into ordered arrays. Transfer printing, on the other hand, is effective in generating dense electrode arrays but has yet to prove suitable for making fully random accessible crossbars. All the aforementioned electrodes have dramatically increased resistance at the nanoscale imposing a significant barrier to their adoption in operational circuits. Here we demonstrate memristor crossbar arrays with a 2-nm feature size and a single-layer density up to 4.5 terabits per square inch, comparable to the information density achieved using three-dimensional stacking in state-of-the-art 64-layer and multilevel 3D-NAND flash memory. Memristors in the arrays switch with tens of nanoamperes electric current with nonlinear behaviour. The densely packed crossbar arrays of individually accessible, extremely small functional memristors provide a power-efficient solution for information storage and processing.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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OK, I’ve just ordered book 1 in the series. It’s Benford, it won’t be a bad book even if it isn’t the series I’m thinking of.
Thanks.
I thought HP was going to use them to displace Flash memory, but it doesn’t seem to have happened
Maybe Great Sky River by Gregory Benford? Part of his Galactic Center Saga series. The tech he used was chips that were plugged into implanted jacks.
It’s been a while, and I lost track of the series, but this sounds close to what you’re talking about.
Same thing happened to me. I picked up GSR from some unremembered place, and read it without realizing that it was a middle book from a series.
I decided to wait on reading the rest of the books until I’d forgotten enough of the one I’d read to eliminate the possibility of knowing too much about eventual outcomes.
That time, it think, has come.
I read a SF book years ago where this was a feature.
People had chips that recorded their experiences and thoughts, then when they died the chips were implanted into their heirs, who then were able to have limited “conversations” at a “better than SIRI level” with their ancestors. Older chips were more limited so the really ancient ancestors had less to say and were harder to talk to.
It made consulting with one’s ancestors a real thing in the story, and there may have been something about taking over the group of ancestors once someone was killed.
The rest of the book also had a bunch of really good ideas. There was a war between the humans and robots. And then some intelligent aliens turned up. And the aliens were really alien, with multiple sub brains that they could set up subroutines and subsidiary processes in.
Sadly the one book I read was in the middle of the series, so I only got a snapshot of the middle of the story. And I don’t know what it was called or where I can get the rest.
A 1″ 1,200 layer “module” would equal approximately double the brains biological memory capacity.
Implanted between the brains hemispheres, and with the correct embedded interface, one module could store the entirety of ones life experiences, record how those experiences were processed, and interact in real-time with ones consciousness.
Fact mastery and near instantaneous optimized decision making.
At the time of ones wet-ware expiration, the module, serving as a refuge for ones “self-ness”, could be transferred to a… well, choose your science fiction trope: cyborg, clone, deep space probe, blue whale…
How can you lose them when they’re embedded between the two hemispheres of your brain?
How long have we been waiting for memristors now? Weren’t we supposed to see products based on them years ago?
Memristors are turning into the EESTORs of computing, IMHO.
Imagine memory of all your computers in size of a postage stamp! Hope you don’t lose it. 🙂 But memristors keep data without power, so this will be a big advance for even physically small computers. I am excited!
OK, I’ve just ordered book 1 in the series. It’s Benford, it won’t be a bad book even if it isn’t the series I’m thinking of.
Thanks.
I thought HP was going to use them to displace Flash memory, but it doesn’t seem to have happened
Maybe Great Sky River by Gregory Benford? Part of his Galactic Center Saga series. The tech he used was chips that were plugged into implanted jacks.
It’s been a while, and I lost track of the series, but this sounds close to what you’re talking about.
Same thing happened to me. I picked up GSR from some unremembered place, and read it without realizing that it was a middle book from a series.
I decided to wait on reading the rest of the books until I’d forgotten enough of the one I’d read to eliminate the possibility of knowing too much about eventual outcomes.
That time, it think, has come.
I read a SF book years ago where this was a feature.
People had chips that recorded their experiences and thoughts, then when they died the chips were implanted into their heirs, who then were able to have limited “conversations” at a “better than SIRI level” with their ancestors. Older chips were more limited so the really ancient ancestors had less to say and were harder to talk to.
It made consulting with one’s ancestors a real thing in the story, and there may have been something about taking over the group of ancestors once someone was killed.
The rest of the book also had a bunch of really good ideas. There was a war between the humans and robots. And then some intelligent aliens turned up. And the aliens were really alien, with multiple sub brains that they could set up subroutines and subsidiary processes in.
Sadly the one book I read was in the middle of the series, so I only got a snapshot of the middle of the story. And I don’t know what it was called or where I can get the rest.
A 1″ 1,200 layer “module” would equal approximately double the brains biological memory capacity.
Implanted between the brains hemispheres, and with the correct embedded interface, one module could store the entirety of ones life experiences, record how those experiences were processed, and interact in real-time with ones consciousness.
Fact mastery and near instantaneous optimized decision making.
At the time of ones wet-ware expiration, the module, serving as a refuge for ones “self-ness”, could be transferred to a… well, choose your science fiction trope: cyborg, clone, deep space probe, blue whale…
How can you lose them when they’re embedded between the two hemispheres of your brain?
How long have we been waiting for memristors now? Weren’t we supposed to see products based on them years ago?
Memristors are turning into the EESTORs of computing, IMHO.
Imagine memory of all your computers in size of a postage stamp! Hope you don’t lose it. 🙂 But memristors keep data without power, so this will be a big advance for even physically small computers. I am excited!