Memristors in silicon promising for dense, fast memory

Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.

The device is a "memristor", a long-hypothesised but only recently demonstrated electronic component.

A memristor's electronic properties make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory.

Researchers at the European Materials Research Society meeting now say it can be made much more cheaply, using current semiconductor techniques.

There has been significant interest in memristors since the first prototype was unveiled in 2008, not least because it took 37 years for the device to make it from theoretical proposition to reality.

The name is a portmanteau of memory and resistor, because its resistance changes depending on how much current has passed through it; it "remembers" that value even after power is turned off.