Missing link' memristor created: Rewrite the textbooks?

EE Times ^ | 04/30/2008 1:00 PM EDT | R. Colin Johnson

[ThePythonicCow]

Well, I don't remember the day they invented transistors very well ... but my mother does. I was being birthed that day, back in late 1947.

[urabus]

Possibilities are limited by the imagination!
just think about it... you can have layers upon layers,
a whole computer on the head of a pin??! Quite possible.
and then not only digital applications but analog as well.
This is the next big advancement in electronics which will
probably accelerate the already outlandish miniaturization
Dick Tracy 2-way wrist tv here we come... but seriously, this has the potential for impacting not only computers and memory capabilities, but even power generation and transportation. At least it seems that way to me.

[muir_redwoods]

"Perhaps price is not proportional to supply, but to the rate of change in supply."

Price changes lad supply changes usually. If there is a sudden threat to supply, panic buying/hoarding can occur, think plywood ahead of a hurricane.

If price change lags supply change, sudden change may induce inefficiencies (system noise) into the equation.

I think, maybe, IMHO

[ThePythonicCow]

Will this enable Moore’s Law to remain valid for the foreseeable future?

Moore's Law is actually hanging in the pretty well. It states that the number of transistors per electronic package doubles every two years. We're still doing that now, only we've started doing it of late by adding dual and quad (look for 16, 64, 256 and 1024) cores per package, rather than complicating and speeding up each individual core. This memistor device could, in another decade, help continue that progression, yes, though not -exactly- as Moore stated it, since a memistor is not a transistor. Transistors will still be needed for logic gates. This memistor device appears to be particularly useful on the scale of tens or hundreds of atoms, but it is a bit storage device, not a logic gate.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Moores_law.svg:

[ThePythonicCow]

system noise

Plenty of that, no doubt. The study of what people will pay for what, in the face of individual and mass fears and manias, is definitely a noisier environment than the study of the motions of mass objects in a vacuum.

[expatpat]

There’s not enough information here to figure out exactly what they have. However, it may be over-hyped.
Non-linear resistors with hysteresis have been around for a long time, so I’m not sure if there really is anything new.

[ThePythonicCow]

Non-linear resistors with hysteresis

This ain't that.

A thousand to one change in conductivity after a pulse of current so quick they have been unable to measure it, that holds up permanently thereafter, without substaining power, in quite different from a resistor that varies dynamically in its resistance.

[engineer dude]

How interesting, maybe people should focus a bit more on the fundamentals of science an not take all the laws for granted.

Hmm I remember that a little Irish company called Steorn face the same challanges with established theories as Leon C. Maybe one to watch ;)

[Right Wing Assault]

Memristors in green.

It would seem to make more sense that the wires are green and the memristors are the orange part where they overlap.

[ThePythonicCow]

the memristors are the orange part

Good point -- I suspect you are right.

[ThePythonicCow]

maybe people should focus a bit more on the fundamentals

Eh ... we can't all be Newton or Einstein. And even those guys had to spend most of their life in the world of "laws taken for granted."

[engineer dude]

By the way thi is not the fourth pasive component more that it completess the hysteric components.

Passive devices
Inductor
Capacitor
Resitor

Passive hysteric devices
Ferroelectric Capacitor
Magnetic materials such a ferrite
Memistor

Passive hysteric devices with retentivity
Electret
Magnet
Memistor?

[ThePythonicCow]

this is not the fourth passive component

That could be -- I didn't understand that "fourth passive" claim.

[SunkenCiv]

“fourth fundamental circuit type” ping.

Scientists develop new type of memory circuit
Reuters | April 30 | Julie Steenhuysen
Posted on 04/30/2008 7:09:12 PM PDT by Aristotelian
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2009483/posts

[Gladi8or]

I am inclined to agree with you. I suspect the upper layer acts as a reservoir and doesn’t otherwise participate in the functioning of the switch. The oxygen atoms are either pushed down into the lower layer to shut off the resistance, or pulled up, to allow the current to flow. Fascinating concept. I am very curious regarding comments about analog operation of the device at low charge.