Date: 05-02-2008
Hewlett-Packard scientists have reported in the science journal Nature that they have designed a breakthrough simple circuit element called a memristor. They believe that the “memory resistor” chip is capable of building miniscule but powerful computers which will be able to mimic intricate biological functions, too. It has also been predicted that the chips will help mobile phones never to lose any memory, data centers to operate smoothly in spite of power failures, and computers to learn from experience. The 5-nanometer thick chip is slated to be known as the fourth fundamental circuit -- after the first three: resistor, capacitor, and inductor. The Nature article was produced by a group of four HP researchers headed by R. Stanley Williams, the founding director of HP Labs’ Information and Quantum Systems Lab. This breakthrough technology, which has the power to replace RAM (Random Access Memory), was first predicted by Berkeley professor Leon Chua in a paper published almost 40 years ago. “It is as fundamental to electronic engineering as a chemical element is to chemistry or an electron is to physics,” Williams said. “It could hit the commercial semiconductor market in five years.”
