For All You Folks Who Just Bought A New Computer (Or Not)

[Buzzy Beetle]

...it's officially obsolete.

Saw this article on Digg, thought it would be a big enough deal to share with you folks.

Scientists Discover Missing Element in Electronic Circuitry
blog.wired.com — After 37 years, the existence of memristors, or memory resistors, has finally been verified by a group of researcher from HP Labs. Scientists says the discovery will pave the way for self-learning machines, more power efficient computers, and a possibly new forms of non-volatile memory.

[l3eeron]

awww c'mon!

So much for future proofing

[Masakari]

Noooooo!

I just bought mine in February!

[dredfox]

This technology won't be available for several years, just about the time our current PCs are ready to be retired. The new tech may not even be used in standard PCs. The memristors allow for a range of values to be stored, not just 1 or 0. Slow changes over time, like a persons face, can be represented with this memory type. With current memory several MB might be needed for even the smallest of changes. Regardless, current memory still has a way to go before it becomes cheaper to develop memristor technology.

What will make this interesting is the mimicking of behaviors. A machine might be able to learn to play a game with an individual humans style, or model behaviors of large populations. The Big Dog robot might be able to learn self-preservation behavior, or computers might be able to pass the Turing test.

This is big.

[MrBlah]

This is awesome

[So Uncivilized]

Yeah, or SkyNet might become self aware and kill us all!!!

[MrBlah]

[quote="So Uncivilized";p="90805"]
Yeah, or SkyNet might become self aware and kill us all!!!
[/quote]

QFT!!!

[chaffe[seagreens]]

does that make my pager also obsolite?

[gator]

Nooooooo... what will I do now

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... cuits.html

Hm, wonder if I can read the Nature article by tunneling through the university connection.

[dredfox]

This could take electronic technology down to process sizes of just a few atoms. At a certain point electrons will hop the walls between the tiny wires of the processor. Memristors may be usable at sizes where traditional technology fails.

[Buzzy Beetle]

[quote="dredfox";p="90835"]
This could take electronic technology down to process sizes of just a few atoms. At a certain point electrons will hop the walls between the tiny wires of the processor. Memristors may be usable at sizes where traditional technology fails.
[/quote]

Speaking of hopping between walls...

[MrBlah]

that so cool buzzy!!!! wire interwebs but wireless power!!!! im all for that