Introduction of Revolutionary Superfast Memristor Technology Held Back Due to Economics

HP’s memristor technology is behind ReRAM, the incredibly fast memory that works at a similar speed to DRAM, yet can also remember its state when the power is turned off. This gives it the revolutionary and coveted ability to replace Flash and DRAM by combining the abilities of both into one. This would give computers the ability to be switched off while maintaining their current state – like suspend mode now on PCs but without power usage or risking scrambling of the computer’s state if the power fails.

However, its introduction is unfortunately being held back not due to any technological reasons, but purely because of economics, investment and market readiness. This is because HP is working with Hynix, who are a major producer of Flash memory, to bring this memory type to market. If memristors were introduced today, they would cannibalize sales of Hynix’s Flash memory, which they can’t allow to happen. For a detailed description of how memoristors work, check out this Wikipedia entry and for a quick summary of the analog nature of memristors, see the video below from HP Senior Fellow, Stan Williams.