HP makes progress with Memristor technology

HP first demonstrated its Memristor technology back in 2006 and has now announced the commercial development of the technology through a collaboration with memory manufacturer Hynix Semiconductor.

Memristors could eventually replace memory chips and hard drives.

They are said to provide greater storage capacity and use 10 times less energy than existing solid-state memory technologies.

The collaboration could see the technology, which will be known as ReRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory), appearing in processors in as little as three years time.

HP is also working on the use of memristors in logic circuits.

Theoretically they could eventually replace transistors in a microprocessor.

While HP’s memristors are titanium based, researchers at Rice University are working on silicon memristors, which could be simpler and cheaper to make than the titanium version.

Rice University is working with fabless chip design house PrivaTran Inc on the technology.