Hewlett-Packard is delaying release of its commercial memristor nonvolatile-memory hardware from the summer of 2013 to the end of 2014. The delay was reportedly prompted by Hynix, which will manufacture the memristor devices. “It’s sad to say, but the science and technology are the easy part,” said HP Senior Fellow and Memristor Research Group director Stan Williams. “Development costs at least 10 times as much as research, and commercialization costs 10 times as much as development. So in the end, research—which we think is the most important part—is only 1 percent of the effort.” University of California, Berkeley professor Leon Chua first described memristors in 1971 as the fourth basic circuit element, along with resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Memristors are a type of resistor in which the flow of electrical current in an electronic circuit is determined by the amount of charge that previously passed through it. They retain memory without power. Memristors can offer resistance in two states, enabling the ones and zeros of binary data. HP has made strides toward commercializing memristor technology, including creating a prototype in 2008. “If they delay the launch of the technology, HP and Hynix are withholding something that could benefit not just the technology industry but every consumer of digital products on the planet,” wrote ZDNet’s Jack Clark. (Wired)(The Register)(ZDNet)
