If you’re like me, you failed to grasp the importance of this recent report in the New York Times. Much like the prediction of new elements using the periodic table, in the 1970s an engineer named Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth circuit element (the first three are resistors, capacitors, and inductors) that he called memristors — resistors with a memory. Their resistance varies depending on their history.
A few years ago Hewlett-Packard researchers studying titanium oxide found puzzling results that turned out to be due to memristors. Only at very small sizes, they found, does memristance become large relative to other effects. How easily you can walk through a room depends on where the furniture is. Memristors involve moving the furniture (atoms). If these new devices can be made practical (e.g., fast enough), they will provide memory much smaller and more power-efficient than current devices. But it’s hard to predict the impact of this discovery — it’s like discovering a new dimension.
I think HP plans on introducing memory devices based on memristors within a couple years. If successful would replace flash devices – faster, much higher capacities
Found the reference from a cheeky Brit site called the Register. A good read if you are interested in technology.
Here is the memristor link
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/hp_memristor/
Flash replacement is a sadly limited use of memristor properties, akin to using train cars as abacus beads. It’s what will happen, though. If memristors don’t succeed in displacing flash that way, that might be the end of memristors. If they do succeed, we might eventually see much better uses that depend on fundamentally different models of computation. The first such uses will probably be in specialized real-time image or signal processing, and others only decades later.
New Scientist’s recent article about this mentions Wei Lu of UMAA, who’s working on a memristor neural computer made from more traditional semiconductors. There’s also a previous (gated) article about the potential of memristors in this field.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527515.900-electronic-marvel-brings-neural-computing-a-step-closer.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.600-memristor-minds-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence.html