HP Scientists Discover the Fourth Element
HP Scientists Discover the Fourth Element
May 1, 2008: A team of scientists from Hewlett Packard’s Information and Quantum Systems Lab has discovered the fourth fundamental circuit element.
Most people have heard of a resistor, capacitor and an inductor, but what isn’t so commonly talked about is the missing member of this family of fundamental circuit elements, the 'memristor'.
The new element is named after its properties, that being a blending of 'memory' and 'resistor'. A memristor is capable of retaining information after losing power and not require the boot-up process. HP anticipates this could spawn an entirely new type of memory as current DRAM systems lose information when the power goes out, which in turn could lead to boosts in power efficiencies and a deeper shade of green for the environmentally friendly data centre push.
The element’s existence was first theorised in 1971 by Leon Chua from the University of California in an academic paper he published. Chua’s argument was that the memristor was the missing ingredient amongst fundamental circuit elements and had properties that could not be duplicated by combinations of the other three elements.
Four researchers at HP Labs' Information and Quantum Systems division, led by R. Stanley Williams have brought Chua’s vision into reality and presented the invention in a paper published in Nature.
“To find something new and yet so fundamental in the mature field of electrical engineering is a big surprise, and one that has significant implications for the future of computer science,” said Williams.
“By providing a mathematical model for the physics of a memristor, HP Labs has made it possible for engineers to develop integrated circuit designs that could dramatically improve the performance and energy efficiency of PCs and data centers.”
The memristor also opens up possibilities for facial recognition technology, the ability for a computer to remember and associate events in a similar pattern to the human brain and the ability for an appliance to learn from experience.