Chad's News

Despite my college classes in electrical engineering, I’d never heard of memristance. First theorized in 1971 and only recently actualized, a memristor essentially has a variable resistance dependent upon the amount of charge that has passed through it.

At this point you may be asking, “And how does this relate to me?” Scientists at Hewlett-Packard have created memristors that act as persistent memory, much like the flash memory used in USB drives, iPods, smart phones, etc., but with improvements. The memristors created by HP match the speed of flash but can pack more memory into the same space. So depending on how this technology is marketed and licensed, we may actually see a successor to flash.

Another feature of HP’s memristors is that it’s possible to juxtapose the CPU and memory, where they use the same memristors for both functions. In addition, memristor-based logic circuits are capable of reprogramming themselves in a way that’s reminiscent of the human brain. These abilities don’t have an immediate market but are full of potential. And we all know that real programmers write self-modifying code.

Link #1: http://www.nytimes.com/…
(via engadget)

Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #3: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
(via Kim Komando)

Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we have long been aware of the difference between the hard disk capacity reported in decimal bytes by the manufacturer and the the same capacity reported in binary bytes by Windows. In fact, I was once published in a print magazine after the editors incorrectly answered a question on the subject.

Most computer programmers and system engineers already know why one kilobyte (KB) can either be 1000 or 1024 bytes, and the more experienced ones know that a kibibyte (KiB) is always 1024. For others, the linked article explains all. I found the most useful part of the article to be Tables E and F, which list the measurement type used for various protocols and computer components.

Link: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/…

IBM is developing a new type of memory, called racetrack, that may be a Flash-killer. The article doesn’t say much about it replacing volatile RAM, aside from a brief mention of racetrack being a “universal” memory.

Link: http://www.montrealgazette.com/…
(via digg)

Kim Komando explains why you probably don’t need more than 3GB of RAM for a standard 32-bit Windows machine. In the old days, video cards had to manage with the 384KB of memory space between 640KB and 1MB. Now some use half of the 4GB space defined in 32-bit systems. She also predicts that we’re going to see 64-bit computers become more popular—especially for gamers with cutting-edge video cards.

Link: http://komando.com/…

The linked article has a nice explanation of the various types of DDR memory.

Link: http://www.komando.com/…

With the popularity of flash memory, it’s easy to forget that flash cells have a limited number of writes before they start failing—typically between 100,000 and 1 million. While this is probably more than enough for the casual user, it’s a good idea to remember that old flash memory may not be reliable.

Link: http://www.komando.com/…

Samsung has developed a potential replacement for flash memory, Phase-change Random Access Memory (PRAM). It’s 30 times faster than flash, lasts 10 times longer, and is less expensive to manufacture. Expect to see it in 2008.

http://www.samsung.com/…

A company named Freescale has gone into mass production with magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM). Its speed is much faster than Flash, but about an order of magnitude slower than current DRAM. If they can get the capacity increased (currently about 512KB), look for this to replace Flash memory. And if they can get the capacity and speed issues resolved, look for it to replace DRAM.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

Memory prices are expected to go up in the next few months, so buy now or pay later.

http://arstechnica.com/…

http://www.tgdaily.com/…