Can You Spell M-e-m-r-i-s-t-o-r-s?

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The link below, even if you have to copy and paste it into your browser, will take you to a remarkable talk by this brilliant guy who works for Hewlett-Packard Labs as a research scientist. I first became aware of what this Williams guy had accomplished a couple of years ago, and researched what there was to be found at the time. I wrote about what I found here, but there wasn't much more data available then. I was very excited to find Williams had created a video to show the progress they'd made.

This highly educated, yet pony-tailed research guy who explains the process is chiefly responsible for inventing a physical prototype for what had previously existed as a mathematical proof generated by Leon Chu, a professor at Berkley. Chu did the math and put his theory aside because in 1971 the needed nanotechnology to prove he was right hadn't arrived yet.

Later, jubilated that his work had been vindicated by how Williams invented a physical prototype that worked as Chu himself had predicted mathematically, he said he was relieved that what he had labeled a "memristor" had become a reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY&feature=related

Meanwhile, back on the farm, I got asked by e-mail why a liberal arts major like me was writing about technology, and I actually had what I think is a good answer. I predicted as far back as maybe ten years ago that in the near future computer memory would get to be so small they would be able to put incredible amounts of it right on the CPU block itself, just nanometers away from the processor.

Williams confirms this right on the video. Moreover, in addition to having a huge RAM cache on the microprocessor block itself, he stated they would be able to put enough non-violatable memory on the same chip to have the equivalent of a large capacity hard drive or a super-big SSD. I didn't predict that part.

I don't know if I understood him correctly or not, but I got the impression that a memristor or groups of them will be the only sort of memory or storage needed. Individual memristors can be assigned various circuitry tasks in such a way that not much else but memristors would be necessary.

A science-fiction book I once read was about robots who had positron brains. Brains that worked very nearly like human brains do. Memristors could be the next step toward creating these sort of creatures. They don't need power to keep the contents in them when the power is turned off. They are what's needed for Instant-On computers. They remember their previous states of being. They have a history that can be exploited by design. Even with the power turned off.

Have I mentioned that they're small? Very, very small. Smaller by orders of magnitude. Hewlett-Packard is a huge Corporation with very deep pockets. They own everything about memristors. When I win the lottery I'm gonna spend all of it... well... most of it, on HP stock.

I don't know if anybody can patent a virtual principle of electricity. Maybe owning the patent for the prototype will be enough to keep the horse in the barn for a while. Searching the net for "memristor" now gets lots of hits. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. I'm willing to bet if they don't, they'll be outta business soon if they're dependent on the digital world to support them.

This invention could put an awful lot of people out of work, and simplify what work is left to low-wage survivalist lifestyles. If such an object as a positron brain is developed, the power-hungry elite class will sterilize all the human females and force them to manufacture their replacement at the robot factory, and then they'll have robots making robots, and the reign of homo sapiens with their immense species flaw will be a thing of the past.
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