HP RESEARCHERS have de¬veloped a working unit of a once-theoretical memory cir¬cuit called a memristor, which may someday replace RAM and make PCs smarter.
Memristor technology could enable PCs to make decisions by understanding patterns of collected data, much as a human brain col¬lects and understands data on a series of events.

For example, a memristor could adjust a microwave's heating time for a potato based on whether the oven overcooked a potato the last time, says HP senior fellow Stanley Williams. Memris¬tors could reach the com¬mercial semiconductor mar¬ket in five years, he says.

A memristor circuit uses lower voltage and turns on faster than memory types such as DRAM and flash. Denser cells allow memris¬tor circuits to store more data than flash memory, too.

The memristor is the fourth basic circuitry element, join¬ing three-the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor¬that science has known about for 150 years, Williams says.