John Markoff skriver i New York Times att forskare vid HP börjat kommersialisera en ny typ av minneskretsar - memristorer - som ska utmana transistorerna, vilka hittills varit den grundläggande byggstenen i våra datorer. Memristorerna kan till att börja med börja ersätta flashminnena, men kan på sikt bli ett alternativ även för mikroprocessorer. Markoff spekulerar i att memristorerna kan få datorerna att försvinna in i vår miljö och bli "osynliga". Han kopplar denna tanke till ett koncept som utvecklades av Mark Weiser på Xerox PARC p 1980-talet.
In the 1980s, another group of Xerox scientists proposed an even more radical idea: the personal computer was destined, like its predecessor the mainframe computer, for obsolescence. They called its successor “ubiquitous computing.” The computer would simply melt away like the Cheshire Cat, and become imbedded in all the objects that make up daily life.Läs mer om Mark Weiser på Wikipedia.
That is coming true: Our pens, pads of paper, cars, indeed virtually everything we use are becoming computer smart. And last week, Mr. Jobs introduced the new versions of already embedded technology, the iPod and Apple TV.
At H.P., the scientist who has led the quest for the new generation of ultrasmall switches, known as memristors, said that their arrival foretells a computing age of discovery that will parallel the productivity increases first brought about by the microprocessor.
“The thing that is happening right now is that we’re drowning in data,” said Stan Williams, director of H.P.’s Information and Quantum Systems Lab. “The amount of data is increasing at an absolutely ferocious pace, and unless we can catch up it will remain useless.”
If he is right, and the memristor makes possible superdense computing memories — one computer chip will hold as much data as an entire disk drive holds today.
För några av mina artiklar om Mark Weiser och ubiquitous computing, se länkarna nedan:
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