"Using memristive properties common for the titanium dioxide thin film devices, we designed a simple write algorithm to tune device conductance at a specific bias point to 1% relative accuracy (which is roughly equivalent to 7-bit precision) within its dynamic range even in the presence of large variations in switching behavior. The high precision state is nonvolatile and the results are likely to be sustained for nanoscale memristive devices because of the inherent filamentary nature of the resistive switching. The proposed functionality of memristive devices is especially attractive for analog computing with low precision data. As one representative example we demonstrate hybrid circuitry consisting of CMOS summing amplifier and two memristive devices to perform analog multiply and accumulate computation, which is a typical bottleneck operation in information processing."

Synchrotron x-rays probed the memristor in a 100 nanometer region with concentrated oxygen vacancies (right, shown in blue) where the memristive switching occurs. Surrounding this region a newly developed structural phase (red) was also found to act like a thermometer revealing how hot the device becomes when read or written.

EETimes - senior HP Fellow Stanley Williams says they have discovered that an electric field and a current act together to enable a memristor memory device that can both be switched very rapidly and hold its state indefinitely.

* In testing, they have switched these devices over 30 billion times and counting, with no degradaton in their ability to retain information

Not only does an applied voltage drive the migration of oxygen vacancies in the device, but at the same time there is a current that heats it up to about 300 degrees Celsius—just enough to turn the amorphous film into a crystalline film

Register UK - HP has figured out the physical and chemical mechanisms that make memristors work.

The core advantage of memristors is that they can theoretically achieve speeds 10 times that of flash at one-tenth the power budget per cell. They can also be stacked, enabling exceptionally dense memory structures.

HP Labs has working devices with three-nanometer memristors that switch on and off in about a nanosecond and could store 20GB in a square centimeter.

HP joined forces with the Korean memory manufacturer Hynix to fabricate ReRAM (resistive random access memory) modules, with a planned ship date of 2013

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"In this paper, we briefly review the concept of memory circuit elements, namely memristors, memcapacitors and meminductors, and then discuss some applications by focusing mainly on the first class. We present several examples, their modeling and applications ranging from analog programming to biological systems. Since the phenomena associated with memory are ubiquitous at the nanoscale, we expect the interest in these circuit elements to increase in coming years."