Memristor
Memristor (pronounced /'m?mr?st?r/; a portmanteau of "memory resistor") is a passive two-terminal electrical component in which there is a functional relationship between electric charge and magnetic flux linkage. When current flows in one direction through the device, the electrical resistance increases; and when current flows in the opposite direction, the resistance decreases. When the current is stopped, the component retains the last resistance that it had, and when the flow of charge starts again, the resistance of the circuit will be what it was when it was last active. It has a regime of operation with an approximately linear charge-resistance relationship as long as the time-integral of the current stays within certain bounds.
Memristor theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua in a 1971 paper. In 2008, a team at HP Labs announced the development of a switching memristor based on a thin film of titanium dioxide. These devices are being developed for application in nanoelectronic memories, computer logic, and neuromorphic computer architectures. In October 2011, the same team announced the commercial availability of memristor technology within 18 months, as a replacement for Flash, SSD, DRAM and SRAM.
