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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

+hardware

Don't count on memristor technology ever making it out of HPE Labs [theregister.co.uk]. It has been displaced by 3D XPoint [wikipedia.org] and other competing memory/storage technologies:

Memristor was first reported by HPE Labs eight years ago [theregister.co.uk], as a form of persistent memory. At the time HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams compared it to flash: "It holds its memory longer. It's simpler. It's easier to make - which means it's cheaper - and it can be switched a lot faster, with less energy."

Unfortunately it isn't simpler to make and still isn't here. NVMe SSDs have boosted flash's data access speed, reducing the memory-storage gap, and Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint SSDs will arrive later this year as the first viable productised technology to fill that gap.

WDC's SanDisk unit is working on ReRAM technology for its entry into storage-class memory hardware, and HPE has a partnership with SanDisk [theregister.co.uk] over its use. SanDisk foundry partner Toshiba has a ReRAM interest. WDC's HGST unit has been involved with Phase Change Memory [theregister.co.uk]. IBM has demonstrated a 3bits/cell Phase Change Memory (PCM) technology [theregister.co.uk]. Samsung has no public storage-class memory initiative, although it has been involved in STT-RAM [theregister.co.uk].

The problem for HPE with Memristor is that it would need volume manufacturing to get the cost down. Unless it can sell the potential chips to other server OEMs, it would be the only consumer of Memristor chips and have its servers compete with the XPoint-using OEMs that Intel and Micron are lining up.

Original Submission