The Mythical Memristor

In a previous post, I mused about how new types of computer memory might change the future of computers. The future I envisioned might arrive sooner than I thought. An article in EE Times describes the creation at HP of working memristors. Leon Chua postulated the existence of the memristor in 1971 as the fourth passive circuit element after the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. It has remained hypothetical ever since, until now.

Computers in the Future

Recently, I have seen many articles about a new type of computer memory. Actually, the stories resemble an IBM press release but they have appeared all over the news services. The new type of memory (called “racetrack” memory) will combine the best attributes of flash memory and hard drives. It will be non-volatile, large-capacity, inexpensive, and it won’t wear out. It will be years before memory of this type is produced but the idea sounds promising. I tend to doubt promises of future technology, but I think it plausible that racetrack memory or some other promising technology could yield memory capacities of multiple terabytes in the future.

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