Memristors

Memristors are non-volatile electrically-adjustable resistors. Made mostly from metal oxides, they scale well and are proposed as memory elements in nanometre-scale logic for future brain-like networks.

It was described and named in 1971 by Leon Chua, completing a theoretical quartet of fundamental electrical components which comprises also the resistor, capacitor and inductor.(source: Wikipedia)

Electrical Symbol

Memristors have not been yet developed into a mass volume component, nevertheless memristors have gathered a lot of interest by university research as a next generation memory technology by being smaller, more power efficient and yet being able to support more memory states when compared to existing technologies used in our smartphones and computers.

Brain like computing systems using memristors have already been demonstrated.

Detail description is beyond this course, for those interested, here are couple of 2019 and 2020 reference links

• https://passive-components.eu/memristors-key-to-nano-scale-analogue-digital-adaptive-hardware/
• https://passive-components.eu/new-memristor-boosts-accuracy-and-efficiency-for-neural-networks-on-an-atomic-scale/
• https://passive-components.eu/toward-brain-like-computing-new-memristor-better-mimics-synapses/
• https://passive-components.eu/first-programmable-memristor-computer-aims-to-bring-ai-processing-down-from-the-cloud/
• https://passive-components.eu/memristors-supports-brain-like-computing-system/
• https://passive-components.eu/purity-of-materials-may-be-the-key-in-further-memristor-development/
• https://passive-components.eu/nanometers-thin-niobium-oxide-nbo2-memristor-can-bring-breakthrough-in-neuromorphic-ai/
• https://passive-components.eu/graphene-based-memristors-show-promise-for-brain-based-computing/