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New Memristor Makes Low-Cost, High-Density Memory
KentuckyFC writes "A group of electronics engineers have discovered that a thin layer of vanadium oxide acts as a memristor, the fourth basic component of circuits after resistors, capacitors, and inductors that was discovered last year. At a critical temperature, a current passing through the layer causes it to change from an insulating state to a metal-like state, thereby changing its resistance (abstract). The effect lasts many hours — which is what makes the layer a memristor (a resistor with memory). The team says this could be scaled up to make resistive random access memory, or RRAM, at very low cost, from little more than layers of vanadium oxide."
No more need to supercool RAM on seized computers in order to extract passwords - the RAM will just naturally hold state for hours.
If they're going to use this, (some) people are going to want to have more secure operating systems that don't leak security data all over the place.
Memristors sound like an interesting method for creating analog electronic neural networks that learn...