HP turns theory into fact with memristor memory

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 01 May 2008 02:18

Your IT - Home IT

Memristor technology could be used for storage systems as well as working memory, further reducing power consumption.

HP's memristors are already much smaller than the smallest devices in current semiconductor chips, but can be manufactured using the same kind of equipment. Generally speaking, the smaller a device can be made, the less power it consumes.

At this stage the main stumbling block is that memristors run at about one tenth the speed of current DRAM circuits, although the physical changes that move the device from one state to another are said to occur extremely quickly.

Apart from its application in otherwise conventional digital circuits, Williams believes the memristor could be used in analogue circuits that reflect the way brain synapses work, allowing comparisons between two values. This could be applied to pattern recognition problems, such as face recognition.