HP proved in 2008 that a fourth passive circuit element, which until then had only existed as a hypothesis, actually could be fabricated. This element is called the "memristor" and was first described by researcher Leon Chua at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971.
- Since our brains are made of memristors the floodgates are now open for the commercialization of computers that can calculate like human brains, which is totally different from the von Neumann architecture that all digital computers are based on, wrote Chua at the time.
The word memristor is an abbreviation of "memory resistor", and the item has a property that can not be recreated by the other, passive circuit elements (resistors, capacitors and induction coils), namely to remember resistance.
It is immediately clear that such a property may be used to store data in memory without adding power.
Since 2008, HP has conducted research on the technology and has a recently published a article in Nature demonstrating that memristors can also be used in conjunction with logical operations, specifically Material conditional (IMP), which is a fundamental operation in Boolean logic.
It should be possible to build a logical IMP port by combining two memristors with a normal resistance. If one adds an additional memrisitor, which acts as a false operation, you have a full set of logical operations.