What revolutionary changes will the birth of memristor bring to computers?

Memristor, full name memristor. It is a circuit device that represents the relationship between magnetic flux and charge. Memristor has the dimension of resistance, but unlike resistance, the resistance of memristor is determined by the charge flowing through it. Therefore, by measuring the resistance of the memristor, we can know the amount of charge flowing through it, thus having the function of memory charge. In 197 1, Leon O. Chua pointed out that there should be a circuit element in nature, which represents the relationship between magnetic flux and charge. In 2008, researchers from Hewlett-Packard Company made nano-memristors for the first time, which set off a research upsurge of memristors. The appearance of nano-memristor is expected to realize nonvolatile random access memory. In addition, the integration, power consumption and reading and writing speed of the random access memory based on memristor are better than those of the traditional random access memory. In addition, memristor is the best way to realize the synapse of artificial neural network with hardware. Due to the nonlinear characteristics of memristors, chaotic circuits can be produced, which have many applications in secure communication.

Memristor, the full name of memory resistor, can roughly weigh its role from these two words. The first person to put forward the concept of memristor was China scientist Leon O. Chua, who was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. The time is 197 1 year. Professor Cai, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, when studying the relationship between charge, current, voltage and magnetic flux, came to the conclusion that there should be another component besides resistance, capacitance and inductance to represent the relationship between charge and magnetic flux. The function of this element is that its resistance will change with the amount of current passing through it. Even if the current stops, its resistance will remain at the previous value until it receives the reverse current.

Simply put, memristor is a kind of nonlinear resistor with memory function. Its resistance can be changed by controlling the change of current. If the high resistance is defined as "1" and the low resistance is defined as "0", this resistance can realize the function of storing data. It is actually a nonlinear resistor with memory function.

Take a common water pipe as an example. When the current is the amount of water passing through and the resistance is the thickness of the water pipe, when the water flows in one direction, the water pipe will become thicker and thicker with the water flow. At this point, if the water flow is turned off, the thickness of the water pipe remains unchanged; On the contrary, when the water flows in the opposite direction, the water pipes will become thinner and thinner. Because such an element "remembers" the previous current, it is called a memristor.