A memory resistor or memristor, is a controllable resistor that stores information it has acquired, hence the memory part. The memristor is a combination of resistors, capacitors, and inductors. It is on the cutting edge of memory, but it has now been found that the memristor may also be able to perform logic functions. This opens up the possibility of performing computations on the same chip as the memory is located, greatly increasing speed.
Memristors offer the advantages of requiring less energy to operate, being faster, and storing over twice as much data as solid state technologies (flash). Since they store information, they can be used like a computer that doesn’t need to boot up. HP Labs is on the front line of development for architectures to harness the immense potential of the memristor. Probably the most exciting part is that the memristor acts like human memory, which could lead to computations like the human brain, rather than following the von Neumann architecture. (Check out the article on the link HP Labs above)
Michael Litchfield