HP Discovers Potential “God Particle” of Electronics

From the article:

But today, Hewlett Packard announced a new electrical component born of theoretical physics. The device, a nanoscale component called a “memristor,” requires no power to retain data, which it can store more densely than a hard drive and access about as fast as a computer’s RAM memory—potentially allowing it to replace both components in the future.

H.P. Reports Big Advance in Memory Chip Design

From the article:

The device, called a memristor, would be used to build extremely dense computer memory chips that use far less power than today’s DRAM memory chips. Manufacturers of today’s chips are rapidly reaching the limit on how much smaller chips can be.

Scientists Create First Memristor: Missing Fourth Electronic Circuit Element

From the article:

One of his suggestions was that you could perhaps do some type of neuronal computing using memristors. HP Labs thinks that’s actually a very good idea.

“Building an analog computer in which you don’t use 1s and 0s and instead use essentially all shades of gray in between is one of the things we’re already working on,” says Williams. These computers could do the types of things that digital computers aren’t very good at –- like making decisions, determining that one thing is larger than another, or even learning.

This is the third completely new form of memory to be announced this year. Here are the other two:

1) “Racetrack” memory to replace hard disks

2) Phase Change Memory

[[[See previous invention]]]