Memristors' one-year delay will hit IT in the wallet

http://www.zdnet.com/memristors-one-year-delay-will-hit-it-in-the-wallet-7000000586/

by ck2 • 14 years ago

71 57 14 years ago

zdnet.com

ck24• 14 years ago

This might also explain why SSD prices are dropping fast.

50 cents per GB now and falling.

mtgx• 14 years ago

What short-sighted thinking. This is why you don't see much innovation from the big companies usually. This is like Apple thinking they shouldn't release the iPad because it would cannibalize their Mac sales. Instead of being an also-ran in flash, Hynix/HP could be the leaders in memristors. But it seems you won't see them thinking like that.

Oh well, I guess Samsung will take the lead in that market, too, then, since I think they were the other main company working on memristors.

unreal37• 14 years ago

An LOL at "this is why you don't see much innovation from the big companies" followed by a what-if-Apple-did-this example. Apple is a big company. The biggest.

The article is B.S. If the release of this technology will replace all RAM, Flash memory, and other memory storage technologies as the author expects, they wouldn't need to delay it.

And lastly, if you believe the article, it says it's not in HP's control anyways. It's the manufacture partner Hynix fault.

batista5• 14 years ago

>An LOL at "this is why you don't see much innovation from the big companies" followed by a what-if-Apple-did-this example. Apple is a big company. The biggest.

And a LOL for misunderstanding his point.

He said that "this is why you don't see MUCH innovation from the big companies", not "why you don't see ANY" innovation.

And he used Apple precisely as a _counter_example_ to that lack of innovation, saying that what HP did would be like a hypothetical Apple saying they won't release the iPad because that would cannibalise iPhone sales.

mikecane• 14 years ago

When I first heard of HP's memristors, I was looking forward to them using it in the TouchPad, to really compete against Apple. Now this. FAIL all around, HP.

ryanmolden2• 14 years ago

Does HP have patents here that would prevent others from introducing this tech? Or are they/Hynix simply the only ones with experience with the tech to pull it off? This is such a clear example of one of the fears spelled out in The Innovators Dilemma it isn't even funny.

Edit: whoops, mtgx says Samsung is also in this space, so it sounds like patents can't be an obstacle, or at least until the suing starts.

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Oh really, Samsung is going to compete with them?

So let's speculate

1 - They delayed this because of manufacturing problems and want to save face

2- They really are that stupid and gave a competitor a 1 year head start (or they made a Gentleman's Agreement - but it wouldn't prevent even another competitor getting in)

In short, this is extremely risky.

ryanmolden2• 14 years ago

3) They feel they are far enough ahead of competitors that they can afford to "drain the pipeline of flash based products" and still come out ahead in memristors ultimately.

I agree a purposeful delay in order to try and squeeze some drops out of existing stock / sunk costs would be risky, and likely stupid. Clearly no corporation has ever made short-sighted, stupid decisions like that before so this would totally be a first :)

zrail2• 14 years ago

I don't see why this is a big deal. It's a year, so what? We've waited decades, a year isn't going to hurt anything. Hynix is a big business that is heavily invested in flash and it takes a lot to completely change the core of your business over, especially when you have to possibly build new fabs and fab technology.

ck24• 14 years ago

Double the storage space and possibly double the reliability for the same price?

Also potential power savings.

A year is a huge deal if someone was planning on spending a million on a datacenter to make it use SSD for database, etc.

zrail2• 14 years ago

Sure, but making plans for a million dollar data center based on nebulous timelines and an unproven technology shouldn't be happening anyway. Your point about it being better is true, but the opportunity cost of going with the known right now is essentially zero.

evgen• 14 years ago

Where do you get "for the same price"? I can assure you that even if memresistors cost 1/10 to produce the equiv in other tech they would hit the market at 10x the price. Better tech can get a higher price and as long as the ability to provide market demand is limited by patents or the cost to convert/build fabs then the supplier gets to set the price.

Seems like a lot of people in this discussion failed Econ 101.

Tagbert• 14 years ago

Could they not charge a premium price for memristors early on to prevent flash cannibalization and then bring the price down as they transition their output?

justincormack• 14 years ago

Thats what I thought too. I did think they were going to have a sufficient difference to flash that they would be able to compete in a different way. The HPC market is the classic start point.

However, I think there may be other reasons. Maybe they haven't worked out the connection architecture properly?

Raphael• 14 years ago

Perhaps they are worried about reverse-engineering, so don't want to release any until they have scaled up manufacturing.

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

It only makes sense to continue selling the older, higher margin products until a competitor comes up. They are asking for it.

I would even root for Samsung on this (also because it just finished my laundry).

tsotha• 14 years ago

>It only makes sense to continue selling the older, higher margin products until a competitor comes up.

If you're the only one on the market with memristors the margin is determined by whatever the market will bear, and if they're really that much better than existing technologies it will be much larger.

None of this conspiracy stuff makes any sense. They're delaying a year because they can't manufacture the product.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328535.200-online-sp...

It seems like HP still hasn't been issued patents for it (at least by my googling) so I guess they are happy to just sit on their tech.

Also, Memristors are already being actively used for military technology, most notable the SyNAPSE project.

ck24• 14 years ago

Why on earth was my title replaced? Sigh.

Revolutionary memristors purposely delayed to prevent cannibalization of flash

It's 100% accurate and more relevant.

johnpmayer• 14 years ago

Maybe something HN does automatically to prevent editorializing. Not saying that your title in particular was doing that.

jvm• 14 years ago

The ridiculous thing is it's not like the original headline wasn't editorializing.

mikeash3• 14 years ago

It makes no sense to me.

What's the advantage of memristor-based storage, exactly?

If it's cheaper to make, then sell storage at a price that undercuts the competition but still makes a better profi.

If it's more reliable, then sell storage at a higher price with a better warranty.

There's no sensible scenario where memristors are ready to go but they don't want to sell any memristor products yet because it will hurt existing sales. Either they can make a better product, or they can't, and if they can't make a better product then the stuff simply isn't ready.

jtmcmc• 14 years ago

what if they have a bunch of flash products already made? They need to get rid of that product first before they make it worth less.

ck24• 14 years ago

It's the same price for double the storage, less power and likely more reliability.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/tha-amazing-memristor-bey...

They are probably delaying to get their profit out of existing investments in tool and die for their factories, as well as high inventories.

While all the manufactures are likely not in cahoots, it's probably like the airline industry where they look to the left and right and nod at each other and change fees right after each other.

Also notable how hard drive prices have not dropped even though supply is completely back to normal.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

The advantages of memristor technology are many. In ordinary conventional non-volatile storage it offers densities higher than flash and speeds approaching SDRAM. I'll let you work out the implications of that on your own.

batista5• 14 years ago

>There's no sensible scenario where memristors are ready to go but they don't want to sell any memristor products yet because it will hurt existing sales.

It's not about existing sales, it's about stock. If you have built a lot of stock of traditional devices (including materials and infrastructure for manufacture) while waiting for memsistor tech to be ready for prime time, you want to sell it first before you put out the new products in the market.

But surely, competitors will jump right in, right? Unfortunately, there are that many players. Similarly, they can't "undercut the competition" because there is no competition, just a few players that "understand" each other.

Storage/memory manufacturers have had a few price-fixing scandals over the years.

lawnchair_larry• 14 years ago

I fucking hate that mods keep doing this.

geuis2• 14 years ago

Where do you draw the line if they didn't? If everyone was allowed to submit whatever title they wanted, it would quickly degrade into Digg-quality submissions. In rare circumstances, it is necessary to change titles. A piece of content might not have any title at all, so needs one. It is better for the health of HN that mods act on the conservative side.

geuis2• 14 years ago

It was replaced because the original title was perfectly fine, and your version was a bit editorialized. I'll grant that you provided a good summary, but the "revolutionary" word is an adjective. Some people, including myself, would not find memristors to actually be revolutionary. They are an important technology advance, but that is all. Penicillin was revolutionary, as was the Magna Carta. The word is too-oft used for things that really are not revolutionary at all.

sesteel2• 14 years ago

A lot of people think memristors have the potential to change computing in fundamental ways (requiring new architectures) and bring forth true AI. I'd call it revolutionary.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/mo...

http://www.neurdon.com/category/synapse/

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4088605/Memristor-em...

ghshephard• 14 years ago

According to Wikipedia, "(March 23, 2012) A team of researchers from HRL Laboratories and the University of Michigan announced the first functioning memristor array built on a CMOS chip for applications in neuromorphic computer architectures." - this technology is two-three years away from being available in consumer packages.

You should expect to be able to purchase something (for more than the equivalent flash package would cost you) in 2015-2016. If they play out the way they should, the price/performance slope should cross over with flash around 2017-2018.

These new technologies usually take about 10 years to come online at volume. No conspiracy required.

pbharrin2• 14 years ago

This is a stupid article. The author makes the assumption that HP and Hynix COULD ramp to high volume production, however it is clear from HP's statement that this is not true:

"As with many other ground-breaking technologies being developed at HP Labs, HP has not yet committed to a specific product roadmap for memristor-based products,"

Let me also say that I worked in the non-volatile memory business for seven years. Any organization that can scale better than its competitors will do so, unless they don't like making money. End of story. If HP and Hynix are not ramping to high volume, it's because they are not ready, not some stupid conspiracy theory that they want to stagnate the development of cloud-buzzword "technology".

petermonsson2• 14 years ago

Ah, a breath of fresh sanity from someone who knows the industry. That is very welcome, thank you.

The semiconductor industry is brutal in general. Selling to consumers is worse, but the worst by far is the part that sells any type of memory. Forget the conspiracy theories. This space is full of dead companies. Someone will eat you.

batista5• 14 years ago

>The semiconductor industry is brutal in general. Selling to consumers is worse, but the worst by far is the part that sells any type of memory.

Really? Because there have been all kinds of price-fixing scandals and accusations for the last 2 decades... Price fixing does not sound very cut-throat to me...

gruseom• 14 years ago

I worked in the non-volatile memory business for seven years.

Then I'd be curious to hear what you know/believe about memristors in general. To me they sound super exciting but there have been dismaying indications of vaporware (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4231367) and this latest postponement is consistent with that.

pbharrin2• 14 years ago

I do not have enough information to say what exactly is the problem with HP's memristor. The axiom of technology development in NVM is:

"The technology of the future will always be the technology of the future."

Just like cold fusion has been 5 years out for a long time. I know that is cynical, but the truth is flash keeps scaling and the new technologies are not cost effective compared with silicon flash.

evolution > revolution

The second link did a good job of summarizing the technologies that existing companies are pursuing. Most of these companies would like to have a two terminal element (resistor) over a three terminal element (transistor) if they could. It requires less space. When one of them finds a way to make it cheaper than flash you will see it on the market.

ahuibers• 14 years ago

I haven't seen any lab demonstrations of multi Mbit devices. Until we see that this is years away from production in my experience as a device physics researcher. All storage technologies so far have taken 10 years plus to have large market share and I don't see this as an exception.

Klinky• 14 years ago

I'll believe memristor tech when I see commercial products of it available. I don't think it's far fetched that a company is slow to shift it's mainstay, profitable business product to an unproven new technology that has no mainstream commercial products out yet. Cutting edge tech is always rife with delays and shortcomings that weren't anticipated until the rubber actually hit the road.

While many in these comments are touting "double storage & reliability for the same price", that would be for raw manufacturing costs, not including all the R&D money and the cost of fabrication plants that must be built or retooled. It is highly unlikely consumers will see those benefits anytime soon.

adaml_623• 14 years ago

This catchy headline is essentially saying that company X is going to watch their growth and expenditure and maximise their profits in a manner which won't benefit consumers.

The headline is interesting because it's stating the obvious, standard business practice but possibly they have hit on the only way to glam up the incredibly boring story of 'product will be delayed by 12 months'.

ameasure• 14 years ago

Hynix (2nd largest memory chip maker after Samsung) and friends were fined just a couple years ago for price fixing memory, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10126755. If competition isn't a problem, why waste money on costly innovation?

Reminds me of Eastman Kodak circa 1975 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak#Shift_to_digital.

That said, this is pretty weak evidence of collusion.

ngvrnd• 14 years ago

This is worrisome:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7319

Memristors' one-year delay will hit IT in the wallet

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