The Memristor: The next computer revolution

[J-Dude]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor


Ever complain about your slow computer? Hate having to buy RAM and graphics cards and processors every year just to keep up with standard content? Want to play Crysis on max graphics with no fps loss? Ever wished you could own a computer so powerful that these issues would never be a problem for you ever again?

My friends, with the newly discovered technology called the Memristor, that day is VERY close at hand...

 

[sub]

No its not.

 

[SailorAlea]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor


Ever complain about your slow computer? Hate having to buy RAM and graphics cards and processors every year just to keep up with standard content? Want to play Crysis on max graphics with no fps loss? Ever wished you could own a computer so powerful that these issues would never be a problem for you ever again?

My friends, with the newly discovered technology called the Memristor, that day is VERY close at hand...

This technology doesn't seem to have any applications for making graphics cards or processors faster. However, it's non-volatile.. meaning if you turn off your computer, you can instantly be back to Windows/etc, which is useful.

 

[J-Dude]

Actually, an extremely learned friend of mine informed myself and my peers that this technology would pave the way for drastic improvements in computer memory, allowing for nearly 150 gigabytes of data to be stored on a single square centimeter of a given chip. Look at the reference articles linked on that page. This kind of technology would make our current generation of computers as obsolete as that used in a pocket calculator. Just as we transcended from mere kilobytes of RAM as the standard to entire Gigabytes, so will we soon be met by an advance that will make the common household computer capable of more than we could fathom in a PC. We're talking TERABYTES of RAM here my friends. It could take decades for us to truly utilize that much computing power in the way we do today.

Truly, this excites me to the core. Whatever any of you do, don't take any drastic measures to upgrade your machines to 20 gigabytes of RAM or anything, because that investment isn't going to mean much soon.

 

[Adaptus]

I can has 1 TB of RAM + Cell Processor 5.0 pl0x?

 

[Hibiki]

Theres actually a lot of stuff being worked on in the area of data storage and stuff like this. If I recall right theres a company out there working on a molecular based storage that uses carbon atoms or somesuch element suspended in water that lets it hold some ungodly amount of data like several thousand terabytes of data.

Not to mention that one quantum computer that can do it's mathematical formula problems while it's off.

 

[Grega]

It could take decades for us to truly utilize that much computing power in the way we do today.

Wrong there my friend.

Its really easy to use all that up. The reason why there is such a slow progress in usage of hardware is because the program designers are limited by the currently existing technology.

In other words. The programs are castrated before they are even started.

Imagine that terrabyte of ram if you will. It wouldnt really be to hard to design and code a game for twice the amount. Increase the map size, details and overall GFX, add some sloppy coding and youll run out of memory quite fast you know.

Heck i can write a 5 line program in C that would eat up that much memory. While its true that it would take quite some time to fill it up but it eventually would run out of memory.

So saying this would teke decades to utilise that much is a fabricated claim, a lie if you will.

Raise the capacity standards and you remove some limits off of the people making the programs. They can remove even more limits but that would make even such a system lag.

 

[sub]

Theres actually a lot of stuff being worked on in the area of data storage and stuff like this. If I recall right theres a company out there working on a molecular based storage that uses carbon atoms or somesuch element suspended in water that lets it hold some ungodly amount of data like several thousand terabytes of data.

Not to mention that one quantum computer that can do it's mathematical formula problems while it's off.

Yeah. Seagate is currently working on a harddrive that'll cost roughly the same to produce as todays harddrives, except for every gig our hard drives hold, the new one will be able to hold a terabyte. I don't remember how exactly it worked, only that it involved heating the harddrive up slightly.