HP and Hynix collaborate to bring memristor technology to market

The memory, called resistive random access memory (ReRAM) was pioneered by researchers at HP Labs and is said to have the potential to replace Flash, dram and even hard drives. The agreement between HP and Hynix will see the two organisations developing memristor technology in the form of ReRAM, a non-volatile memory built using materials that change resistance when a voltage is applied across them. Stan Williams, HP Senior Fellow and founding director of the Information and Quantum Systems Lab (IQSL), said: "People have been attempting to make resistive memory for a long time. But because they didn't understand that the devices they had were memristors, they weren't making good progress. Once you understand the mathematical framework for memristors, you can design circuits that perform the way they are intended to perform." In the short term, Williams suggests that the most obvious application for memristor technology is as a replacement for Flash memory. "Memristor memory chips promise to run at least 10 times faster and use 10 times less power than an equivalent Flash memory chip." According to Williams, memristor memory can be erased and written over many more times than Flash memory and, in his words, has the potential to 'twice the capacity of flash memory'. HP says the memristors are designed to retain information even when the power is off and are energy efficient. This means that laptops could boot up much faster and last longer on one charge since it consumes less energy. Trials conducted at HP Labs showed that memristor ReRAM circuits require less energy to operate, are faster, and have higher endurance than Flash. The memristors are based on a thin film technology, so the memory elements can be stacked on top of each other and more bits can be built onto a single chip. According to HP, they are virtually immune to interference from ionizing radiation – making them suitable for inclusion in ever-smaller but ever-more-powerful devices. Research from the HP Labs IQSL team published earlier this year showed that, in addition to acting as memory devices, memristors can also perform logic functions. This suggests that computation might eventually be performed where data is stored, something that could result in computers running significantly faster than at present since data will not have to be passed around among multiple chips.