Introducing the Memristor

Move over resistors, inductors, and capacitors a fourth circuit component has finally been introduced. The memristor has been theorized since UC Berkeley Leon Chua brainstormed the idea back in 1971, but until recently it’s only been theory. Hewlett-Packard has finally built one and the future of electronics will be unquestionably changed by this discovery.

So what is a memristor?

A memristor is a circuit that remembers how much current has passed through it. Why is this important, well let me tell you. A memristor can save its electronic state even when there is no current flowing through it, aka it’s turned off. It can also remember a current flow so it’s a little bit more than just a binary one or zero which in electronics is denoted by on or off. Getting any ideas of why this is revolutionary yet?

Why this is a Gamechanger

A circuit that can remember more than one state allows for much more complicated computations first of all. Instead of something on a binary level processing a one or a zero the computational power of having more options provides exponential more options. As we reach the limit of decreasing computation pieces footprints and multicores continue to increase this offers a whole new direction for keeping Moore’s Law moving and computational power increasing.

Also memristors make an excellent replacement to flash memory. Think about the advantages of flash memory. You can take it anywhere and quickly access it. Also memristors could be used by computers for instant boot times. No more waiting for a computer to boot up while it reads all the instructions of where it shut down from the hard drive. Everything could be stored in a memristor RAM stat and instantly turned back on exactly where it was turned off. Also they use less power than todays flash memory.

The Future

Right now HP has a shorter goal of 2012 for memristors to start replacing flash memory. After that we are probably looking at 2014-2016 window of memristors begin to replace DRAM and hard disks all together.

Additional Readings about Memristors

 

 

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