HP's Memristors

A chip consists of resistors, capacitors and Inductors now HP is adding a fourth dimension to the Chip a Memristor. It can hold intermediate values apart from 0’s and 1’s and is the basis for dense memory and Artificial Memory applications. Although its speed is very much less compared to existing DRAM’s ( 1/ 10^th to be precise) but then it is very low on power requirements which acts as a big plus in its favor.

Also applicability is a great issue, that’s what I believe. If some body discovers, what is the sequence of operations and intermediate values required to complete an operation lot of time could be ultimately saved if the right intermediate values are stored and need not be recalculated. This makes the application very much suitable to AI and Expert system application. With training of the chip on the lines of biological brain functioning with training of problem solving synapses and cores on the chip it could lead to some break through achievements in Biological computing.

IBM and Intel are also working on Phase Change Memory which requires more power and works by changing the state of a glassy material from amorphous to crystalline and back. The switching speed of such memory is also low