Memristor- The Fourth Fundamental Circuit Element

The Next Big thing? The memristor, a microscopic component that can "remember" electrical states even when turned off. It's expected to be far cheaper and faster than flash storage. A theoretical concept since 1971, it has now been built in labs and is already starting to revolutionize everything we know about computing, possibly making flash memory, RAM, and even hard drives obsolete within a decade.
Since the dawn of electronics, we've had only three types of circuit components--resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley researcher Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.

 As its name implies, the memristor can "remember" how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today's flash memory.

Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today's PCs.

The memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuffling ones(1) and zeroes(0) around.

Microscopic image of Memristor

An atomic force microscope image of a simple circuit with 17 memristors lined up in a row.  Each memristor has a bottom wire that contacts one side of the device and a top wire that contacts the opposite side.  The devices act as 'memory resistors', with the resistance of each device depending on the amount of charge that has moved through each one. The wires in this image are 50 nm wide, or about 150 atoms in total width.

 Advantages

1. Will replace the existing Random Access Memory(RAM) and Dynamic Random Access Memory(DRAM).

2. Denser cells allow memristor circuits to store more data than flash memory.

3. A memristor circuit requires lower voltage, less power and less time to turn on than other memories.

4. It does not require power to maintain its memory.

5. Provides  the ability to store a vast array of states rather than only (1) and (0). This could lead to different class      of computing capabilities.