Memristor Minds, the Future of Artificial Intelligence

godlessgambler writes "Within the past couple of years, memristors have morphed from obscure jargon into one of the hottest properties in physics. They've not only been made, but their unique capabilities might revolutionize consumer electronics. More than that, though, along with completing the jigsaw of electronics, they might solve the puzzle of how nature makes that most delicate and powerful of computers — the brain."

Oblig. wiki-link

[Eudial]

What the hell is a memristor, you ask? [wikipedia.org]

Re:I'm always taken back by this

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably nothing significant, seeing as you can emulate exactly what a digital memristor does with 6 transistors and some electricity always applied. Memristors in CPU/logic would not be viable because of their low wear cycles and very high latencies. It would make for some nice multi-terabyte sized USB sticks though.

As for its analog uses, Skynet comes to mind...

Electrical Memristors Don't Exist Yet

[indigest]

From the article:

What was happening was this: in its pure state of repeating units of one titanium and two oxygen atoms, titanium dioxide is a semiconductor. Heat the material, though, and some of the oxygen is driven out of the structure, leaving electrically charged bubbles that make the material behave like a metal.

The memristor they've created depends on the movement of oxygen atoms to produce the memristor-like electrical behavior. Purely electrical components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, and transistors only rely on the movement of electrons and holes to produce their electrical behavior. Why is this important? The chemical memristor is an order of magnitude slower than the theoretical electrical equivalent, which no one has been able to invent yet.

I think the memristor they've created is a great piece of technology and will certainly prove useful. However, it is like calling a rechargeable chemical battery a capacitor. While both are useful things, only one is fast enough for high speed electronics design for applications like the RAM they mentioned. On the other hand, a chemical memristor could be a flash memory killer if they can get the cost down (which I doubt to happen any time soon).

Re:I'm always taken back by this

[Yvanhoe]

No. This is a lot of gross overexageration.
Our computers are Turing-complete. Point me to something that is missing in this before I get excited. This new component may have great applications, but it will "only" replace some existing components and functions. It is great to have it but it is nothing essentially missing.

Re:Tha's goint to be the NEXT BIG THING

[Yvanhoe]

AI needs new algorithms to progress. Electronics will not change the way we program computers. They are already Turing complete, a new component adds nothing to the realm of what a device can compute. Expect a revolution in electronics, but IT people will not see a single difference (except maybe a slight performance improvement)

Free transistors

[w0mprat]

Transistors are naturally analog, it's only that we force them to be digital. If we are prepared to accept more probabilistic outputs then there are massive gains to be had http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/08/rice.university.pcmos/ [electronista.com]. Work is being done with analog computing too.

I think memristors will be complimentary to existing rather than a revolution on their own yet analog transistors would have George Boole flip-flopping between orientations in his grave.

Re:I'm always taken back by this

[Sponge Bath]

This [inist.fr] talks about neuronal replacement. It looks like your brain may have a write limit, it just automatically replaces worn out bits.

It was 1960s, and they were quickly obsoleted

[Kupfernigk]

The Esaki (tunnel) diode is a two terminal device which basically exists in two states (I am simplifying, I know) at two different currents. Its weakness is that (a) it requires a current source to keep it in one or the other state and (b) both input (changing state) and output need amplifying devices. As soon as cmos become fast enough things like tunnel diodes were dead in the water because a cmos transistor does its own amplifying, and requires almost no power to keep in one state rather than the other.

Therefore, a device which requires effectively no power to keep in one of two states, and has much greater speed than either flash or magnetic domains would be a step forward compared to the current state of the art.

Re:Tha's goint to be the NEXT BIG THING

[monoqlith]

No. I don't think the solution will be algorithms running on existing digital electronics.

Our brain is an analog machine. Its plasticitiy is not limited to two discrete states. Therefore, the 'software running on hardware' model for how intelligence works is not the most efficient explanation. Our brains operate the way they do because of they way they are organized, not because they are programmed in the sense we usually understand it. To put it another way, the software 'instructions' (algorithm) and the information processing(the processor) are really the same component in our intelligent machine. The mind is not software running on the brain - it *is* the brain.

In my opinion, the first artificial mind will be structured in a similar way, not in the processor-memory paradigm, but in the 'learning circuit' model. This is so because we have 'prior art' (from nature) that demonstrates that this already works for creating an intelligent machine - us.