Since the dawn of electronics, we've had only three types of circuit components--resistors,inductors & capacitors.But in 1971, UC Berkeley researcher Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component,one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the Memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.
What Is It?
As its name implies,the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it.And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it,a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties.Most notably,it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off,making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.
Memristor will theoretically be cheaper & far faster than flash memory & allow far greater memory densities.They could also replace RAM chips as we know them,so that,after you turn off your computer,it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on & return to work instantly.This lowering of cost & consolidating of components may lead to affordable,solid state computes that fit in your pocket & run many times faster than today's PC's.
Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer,thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on"&"off" states that today's digital processors recognize.By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode,memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around
When is it coming?
Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality.Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012.Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM & Hard Disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.
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