Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Memristors: A fundamental shift in computing

Memristors are a new type of electronic component that is currently in development.  They were theorized back in the 70s based on the fundamental properties of voltage, inductance, and capacitance.  It makes the forth basic element to the existing resistor, capacitor, and inductor.

Memristors combine the function of transistor and memory, or to put another way, a logic circuit that remembers.  This represents a tighter integration between processor and memory, much more so than just adding cache to a processor.

HP thinks memristors have a promising future in by [overcoming] the bottleneck of the Von Neumann architecture by integrating memory storage and data processing in a common circuit.  Intel, however, seems to be following a more conventinoal approach to continue growth in computer power.

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