TITLE: Smallest non-commutative ring with unity
QUESTION [21 upvotes]: Find the smallest non-commutative ring with unity. (By smallest it means it has the least cardinal.) 

I tried rings of size 4 and I found no such ring.

REPLY [4 votes]: Here is another approach: Let $R$ be a non-zero ring with identity detone its center by $Z(R)$. It can be easily proved that: If $\frac {R}{Z(R)}$ is a cyclic group (with additive structure) then $R$ is a commutative ring. 
Now since $0,1 \in Z(R)$ then for any ring $R$ with $|R|< 8$ we have $|\frac{R}{Z(R)}| \leq 3$ which implies that $R$ is commutative (since any group of order $1,2$ or $3$ is cyclic) Therefore the smallest non-commutative with identity must have at least $8$ elements and there are such rings of course as it is mentioned in other solutions. The thing I would like to add is that there is no other example other than the ring of upper triangular matrices over $\Bbb{Z}_2$ scince we have the following theorem: 
Let $p$ be a prime number and let $R$ be a non-commutative ring with identity and suppose $|R| = p^3$ then $R$ is isomorphic to the ring of upper triangular matrices over $\Bbb{Z}_p$. 
Also I would like to add that in a similar way we can show that the smallest non-commutative ring (not necessary with identity) has order $4$. As an example consider $R = \{ \begin{pmatrix}a & b \\ 0 & 0 \end{pmatrix} \; | \; a, b \in \Bbb{Z}_2\}$.