New electronics buildling block invented: the memresistor

[theotherguy]

Source:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=missing-link-of-electronics

After nearly 40 years, researchers have discovered a new type of building block for electronic circuits. And there's at least a chance it will spare you from recharging your phone every other day. Scientists at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, Calif., report in Nature that a new nanometer-scale electric switch "remembers" whether it is on or off after its power is turned off. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.)

Researchers believe that the memristor, or memory resistor, might become a useful tool for constructing nonvolatile computer memory, which is not lost when the power goes off, or for keeping the computer industry on pace to satisfy Moore's law, the exponential growth in processing power every 18 months.

Williams adds that memristors could be used to speed up microprocessors by synchronizing circuits that tend to drift in frequency relative to one another or by doing the work of many transistors at once.

Cool, so Moore's law won't die when transistors reach the lower size limit. Also, RAM made with memresistors would not lose the data they store if the computer loses power. This means that you might not have to completely restart your OS when you turn it off, you could simply turn on the power and it would immediately be in the state it was when you turned it off, and in the event of a power surge your computer would be able to simply continue running when power was shut off.

 

[Dekstar]

and in the event of a power surge your computer would be able to simply continue running when power was shut off.

e.g. BSOD'ing.

 

[JFry]

I understand how it can save the state of your memory even with the power off but I'm not getting how it could keep you from having to recharge your cellphone as often. Can anyone explain this?

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

Looks like they use much less power then transistors, so you'd get a lot more out of a battery, meaning the same battery would last longer between charges.