Computer memory that can store about 1TB on device the size of a postage stamp | Hacker News Reader

Computer memory that can store about 1TB on device the size of a postage stamp

kurzweilai.net

92 pointsrpm432122 comments

The Popular Science article referenced suggests we should start to see products with RRAM coming out in 2015, and we should see existing flash product supplanted by 2017.

Anybody in the Flash Memory Industry know if it's really that close?

Currently only HP has something that appears to be working, and they are unwilling to be a commodity manufacturer. HP announced The Machine as the only way to get your hands on a computer with memristors (someday, if/when tehy finally ship it).

Basically HP knows they are sitting on something big, and so they want to build whole mainframes based on it, like its 1970 again.

Wouldn't the consumer market be a bigger money maker for them? If not, do you know why?

-razor thin margins outside of server room

-pride

-if they deliver, they could take over whole industry, at least for a few years, ala IBM 5150

RRAM's are memristors. If you check both their wiki pages, you will see Crossbar's RRAM lined in 2015 and HP's own giving in 2018 for commercial availability.

Memristor is a theoretical term. And RRAM is (arguably) an implementation of memristor. So RRAM seems to be a type of memristor.

Anyways it will be interesting to see the competition. Crossbar will be releasing product much earlier. Lets see if they can seize the day (and the industry). Otherwise HP will deliver. Hopefully the competition will benefit the consumers.

That is an interesting result, normally conduction paths in your dielectric mean your capacitor is dead :-) I look forward to seeing the first commercial implementations of this technology.

According to the original 2010 announcement (1), that's exactly why the phenomenon went unexploited for so long:

“Most people, when they saw this effect, would say, ‘Oh, we had silicon-oxide breakdown,’ and they throw it out,... It was just sitting there waiting to be exploited.”

It's so simple it sounds too good to be true. Two terminals (not three), dielectric in between. High voltage to write (create/destroy the conduction path), low to read (at least the way I understood it). This thing can be stacked in 3D without a problem.

(1) http://news.rice.edu/2010/09/01/nanocrystal-conductors-could...

if this actually does come to market in or around 2015, would it be feasible to replace sql databases with blazing fast redis databases entirely?

Or blazing fast sql databases? Those are two technologies solving rather different problems, I'm not sure how the underlying storage is going to affect things very much.

Redis is so fast because it sits in memory, sql relies heavily on hard disk

Getting good relational DB schemas on REDIS is hard (read: not designed for that). It's mostly for flat data.

Coming soon, in 10-15 years...

Color me excited when we have similar sized batteries that can power smartphones for a week.

Or regular sized batteries that can power smartphones for a month.

Or any battery that will last a full day on my damn iPhone.

OT, but I'd GLADLY trade 2-5mm of phone thickness for a longer-lasting battery; one that can still make it through a long day of heavy usage in a city with lots of interference to power over after the phone is a year old.

This can be done, but only if you use an underpowered cpu.

That's kind of the idea behind the Mophie - it's ironic that Apple goes to all the trouble to shave off some thickness, and as a result, everyone has to connect huge honking plastic shells with spare batteries to them..

The point on apple pushing thinness is often put forward as pure design decision, but I am more and more convinced the manufacturing costs might have at least an equal part.

Battery is the same on every model, and bumping the battery amount would force them to split the line in two models, which would need a separate fabrication line just for the bigger model, or have a cheap one with the same amount of battery, wich would significantly bump the entry model price.

I tried mophie. I like the uNu much better (http://www.myunu.com/products/battery-case.html)

Specifically the uNu is actually certified by Apple unlike the Mophie (which is strange because Apple's stores carry the Mophie and don't carry the uNu.

The uNu also connects the USB so you can sync, copy, etc through USB unlike the mophie

So how much is a postage stamp in terms of real size? Because I can think of many different sizes. Also, 1TB is kind of vague, they should've given the size in Libraries of Congress.

https://xkcd.com/1257/

Also, eight 128GB MicroSD cards are a large-ish postage stamp size, too.

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