Memristors Take Big Step Towards Faster, Low-Power Memory

A new circuit element called a memristor, or ?memory resistor,? could usher in extremely efficient data storage that could eventually make instant-on, low-power PCs a reality.
HP is just three years away from bringing the memristor to market as a new product called ReRAM, for Resistive Random Access Memory. ReRAM can read and write memory bits much faster than flash, even as it consumes a tenth of the energy as flash memory. Considering that HP first disclosed the working prototype of a memristor only two years ago, that?s pretty quick turnaround.
?The fact that we made it from lab to fab so quickly is amazing,? says Stan Williams, director of the Information & Quantum Systems Lab at HP. ?Sometimes it takes 15 to 20 years to turn an experiment into a product.?
In 1971, Leon Chua, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, first postulated that the memristor could be the fourth basic element in electronics ? the other three being the capacitor, resistor and inductor. At that time, he called it the ?missing circuit element.? But it wasn?t until more than three decades later, in 2008, that HP researchers said they had created the first working memristor. Wired.com called the memristor one of the top ten technology breakthroughs of 2008.
HP has now partnered with semiconductor memory maker Hynix to start the manufacturing process. It would make memristors available to consumers through devices such as cameras and digital music players.
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