[ants_everywhere]

> if it turns out that you can not find the necessary improvements in only a single dimension, then the whole thing is kinda doomed and will probably never be competitive

I don't know, we've been working on digital computers since at least the late 1800s. Sometimes technology just takes a while.

That does make it hard to gamble on it if the time horizon is longer than you need to make a profit.

But I don't think we should convince ourselves that a technology that takes longer than 15 years to become profitable is doomed. If we thought like that we'd still be subsistence hunter gatherers.

[myrmidon]

Absolutely! For the record: I don't think that memristors are doomed to be useless-- we'll have to find out.

My point is just that even with research-tech that sounds absolutely amazing (low power, persistent, high density) you just need to fail on a single dimension for it to basically become irrelevant.

This is also why its so easy for media to overhype research results, which (predictably) results in continuous disappointments and loss of trust (of the public) in science reporting and/or even science in general...

[nine_k]

Regarding technology taking time: look at LEDs.

- The effect first discovered: 1907.

- First prototype device built: 1927.

- First commercially viable parts shipping: early 1960s.

- Ubiquitous and cheap as an indicator device: 1980s.

- Highly efficient, used for lighting: 2010s.

The principle never changed along the way. The specific materials changed quite a bit.

[bcrl]

And we only have blue LEDs due to the sheer stubbornness of Shuji Nakamura. If you haven't already heard the tale of its development, head over here and enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M

[cma]

EUV took decades:

> To address the challenge of EUV lithography, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories were funded in the 1990s to perform basic research into the technical obstacles. The results of this successful effort were disseminated via a public/private partnership Cooperative R&D Agreement (CRADA) with the invention and rights wholly owned by the US government, but licensed and distributed under approval by DOE and Congress.[3] The CRADA consisted of a consortium of private companies and the Labs, manifested as an entity called the Extreme Ultraviolet Limited Liability Company (EUV LLC).[4]

> Intel, Canon, and Nikon (leaders in the field at the time), as well as the Dutch company ASML and Silicon Valley Group (SVG) all sought licensing. Congress denied[citation needed] the Japanese companies the necessary permission, as they were perceived[by whom?] as strong technical competitors at the time and should not benefit from taxpayer-funded research at the expense of American companies.[5] In 2001 SVG was acquired by ASML, leaving ASML as the sole benefactor of the critical technology.[6]

>By 2018, ASML succeeded in deploying the intellectual property from the EUV-LLC after several decades of developmental research