[Robotgroup] memristor

[Shane Geiger]

Various quotes from:  
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207403521&printable=true



"Electronic theorists have been using the wrong pair of variables all 
these years--voltage and charge. The missing part of electronic theory 
was that the fundamental pair of variables is flux and charge," said 
Chua. "The situation is analogous to what is called "Aristotle's Law of 
Motion, which was wrong, because he said that force must be proportional 
to velocity. That misled people for 2000 years until Newton came along 
and pointed out that Aristotle was using the wrong variables. Newton 
said that force is proportional to acceleration--the change in velocity. 
This is exactly the situation with electronic circuit theory today. All 
electronic textbooks have been teaching using the wrong 
variables--voltage and charge--explaining away inaccuracies as 
anomalies. What they should have been teaching is the relationship 
between changes in voltage, or flux, and charge."


"If we push current through it hard and fast, it acts like a digital 
device, but if we run current through it gently and slowly it acts as an 
analog device," said Williams. "We are already designing new types of 
circuits in both the digital and analog domains using our crossbar 
architecture.

The memristor behaves like a non-linear resistor with memory--a small, 
compact and highly energy-efficient means of creating a memory device. 
But Chua and Williams claim it is also a new type of circuit element 
that should enable the creation of new devices never before imagined.


"The memristor is our salvation, because it works better and better as 
you make it smaller and smaller," said Chua. "The era of nanoscale 
electronics will be enabled by the memristor. This is not just an 
invention, it is a basic scientific discovery. It has always been 
there--we just had to face these nanoscale problems to realize its 
importance."


-- 
Shane Geiger
IT Director
National Council on Economic Education
sgeiger at ncee.net  |  402-438-8958  |  http://www.ncee.net

Leading the Campaign for Economic and Financial Literacy