memrister finally discovered

[Admin]

The memrister is the fourth fundamental electronic device, next to resistors, capacitors, and inductors. What is it good for? Memory storage that doesn't erase when the power is turned off.

Apparently the discovery was an accident by researchers at Hewlett-Packard.

details:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6207

summary and video here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7377063.stm

[AndrewM]

Say goodbye to 1s and 0s and hello to a plethora of values.  Analog computers here we come.  Wahoo!

[JesseWelling]

I think the ramifications are good by boot times, hello instant on computers, and hello cheaper FPGA like devices.

[airman00]

Say goodbye to 1s and 0s and hello to a plethora of values.  Analog computers here we come.  Wahoo!

wow thats amazing!

[Admin]

Apparently there's been a lot of "fightin' words" over this announcement lately . . .

From the article:

There is nothing new or revolutionary here. Bulk resistance versus incremental resistance is well known. Nonlinear resistances are well known. Resistance which varies depending upon the history of the device are well known. The claim that a fundamentally new circuit element has been found is overblown.

And I thought this was a neat quote:

HP Labs maintains that because of this property, massive memristor arrays could enable brain-like learning.

    In the brain, a synapse is strengthened whenever current flows through it, similar to the way resistance is lowered by flowing current through a memristor. Such neural networks could learn to adapt by allowing current to flow in either direction as needed.

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/tech_talk/2008/07/memristors_coming_soon_to_a_br.html

There are more links to more info in the article if you want to learn more.