Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lynn who wrote (4113)	5/22/2008 1:48:42 PM
From: David A. Lethe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4345

Speaking from perspective of a storage architect with 10+ years experience with EE degree, I can not emphasize enough how profound the memristor is. This discovery has not broken out from the physics and electrical engineering trade rags, and the analysts do not understand what this means. With risk of sounding like hype, let me put this in perspective. I firmly believe that the advancements we have seen in the computer and electronics industry in last 10 years will pale in comparison to what we will see in next several years due to this invention. There is no doubt in my mind, and the minds of the geeks I associate with that a nobel prize will be in order for the team. What the analysts fail to realize is that this component can directly replace, at the nanoscale (moleculer) level, dozens of components such as transistors. It works in analog & digital mode, and is passive. As a memory device alone, HP has already put 100Gbits in a cubic centimeter, and have PRODUCTIZED a crossbar switch. To put this in perspective, the highest density flash memory shipping today is a mere 32Gbits in same area. If you read HP's quantum computing lab site and the blogs, you can see that HP has plans to put 1Tbit in a cubic cm, and it will operate at DRAM speed. This device doesn't need power to retain state, just to read/write. It is green, and can drop power requirements exponentially. The memristor uses Titanium oxide, which is cheap, well understood, and a stable with integrated circuits today. That is why they can already integrate it. It is very, very, easy to drop this component in existing logic as it uses a small fraction of the real estate & power as the components it replaces. As an analog device, this is the secret sauce that will facilitate nanotechnology of the science fiction movies. As for the financial implications, I welcome research by all of us. Something doesn't smell right. HP sandbagged this announcement for well under a year, they are hiring engineers, reworking their custom chips to take advantage of this component, and already have chips that are denser, faster, and use about a million times less power than hard disks. Yet, HP is discounting what this means to the press. Think about it, how can HP already understand this so well that they are already producing high density chips an reworking their IP .. unless they have big plans. Anybody look at the published financials and see if anybody like Intel, SANdisk, or other manufacturers are doing joint ventures? Wikipedia and some other sites are now referencing patents. This is great for HP stockholders, but I just don't know how this will contribute to the bottom line. Will they attempt to get into manufacturing on large scale, or just make money on the IP? I welcome discussion on this.