memristors and populating the goodnews tag cloud
Friday Jan 09, 2009
I recently stumbled upon this pretty good Java circuit simulator applet and noticed that one of the simulated devices was a memristor. I'd never heard of such a component so I googled it and found that some smart people working at HP labs created what was up until recently, a theoretical component. This is really cool. Can you imagine if we'd stumbled along in an alternate universe where capacitors, resistors and transistors or inductors hadn't been discovered and someone suddenly said, "I've invented a resistor!" Maybe the invention of the memristor isn't quite this significant, but it is significant. Neural Networks for example can be implemented much more efficiently using memristor circuitry than with transistor logic. Also, most existing computer DRAM relies on capacitance. A bit is set by charging a tiny capacitor which loses its charge almost instantly so complicated circuitry and energy is dedicated to refreshing each bit thousands of times per second. (When our physics professor told us how this worked, we thought he was pulling our leg, that can't possibly work!) Until memristors can be purchased at your local RadioShack, you can experiment with them with the java circuit emulation applet.
In these times when it's too easy to report on grim economic news, I'm going to try to focus more on underreported good news. I was more bearish than the average bull in 2000 and 2005, Now I'm more bullish than the average bear. I have quite a backlog of obscure but very good news in medical research, education, arts, craftsmanship, astronomy, epidemiology and other technology I'd like to write about.
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