Back in 2008 was the first time when HP announced that it had developed a memristor, an electrical component that “remembers” its last charge, along with what it controls the stream of electrons flowing through it. The company earlier claimed that it would be shipping memristor products by 2013, but with Stan Williams recent presentation, it indicates that it could be 2014 or later until that happens.
Williams, director of the Memristor Research Group at HP, says that:
It’s sad to say, but the science and technology are the easy part. The economics, investment, and market readiness are harder. Our partner, Hynix, is a major producer of flash memory, and memristors will cannibalize its existing business by replacing some flash memory with a different technology. So the way we time the introduction of memristors turns out to be important. There’s a lot more money being spent on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research.
