It took about 40 years to find it, but scientists at Hewlett-Packard said on Wednesday they discovered a fourth basic type of electrical circuit that could lead to a computer you never have to boot up.
The finding proves what until now had only been theory--but could save millions from the tedium of waiting for a computer to find its "place," the researchers said.
Basic electronics theory teaches that there are three fundamental elements of a passive circuit--resistors, capacitors and inductors.
But in the 1970s, Leon Chua of the University of California at Berkeley, theorized there should be a fourth called a memory resistor, or memristor, for short, and he worked out the mathematical equations to prove it.
Now, a team at Hewlett-Packard led by Stanley Williams has proven that 'memristance' exists. They developed a mathematical model and a physical example of a memristor, which they describe in the journal Nature.
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