Memristor based multilevel memory 1

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 MEMRISTOR

For nearly 150 years, the known fundamental passive circuit elements were limited to the
capacitor (discovered in 1745), the resistor (1827), and the inductor (1831). Then, in a brilliant
but underappreciated 1971 paper, Leon Chua, a professor of electrical engineering at the
University of California, Berkeley, predicted the existence of a fourth fundamental device, which
he called a memristor. He proved that memristor behavior could not be duplicated by any circuit
built using only the other three elements, which is why the memristor is truly fundamental.
Memristor is a contraction of “memory resistor,” because that is exactly its function: to
remember its history. A memristor is a two-terminal device whose resistance depends on the
magnitude and polarity of the voltage applied to it and the length of time that voltage has been
applied. When you turn off the voltage, the memristor remembers it’s most recent resistance until
the next time you turn it on, whether that happens a day later or a year later

Chua discovered a missing link in the pair wise mathematical equations that relate the
four circuit quantities—charge, current, voltage, and magnetic flux—to one another. These can
be related in six ways. Two are connected through the basic physical laws of electricity and
magnetism, and three are related by the known circuit elements: resistors connect voltage and
current, inductors connect flux and current, and capacitors connect voltage and charge. But one
equation is missing from this group: the relationship between charge moving through a circuit
and the magnetic flux surrounded by that circuit
Chua demonstrated mathematically that his hypothetical device would provide a relationship
between flux and charge similar to what a nonlinear resistor provides between voltage and cur-
rent. In practice, that would mean the device’s resistance would vary according to the amount of
charge that passed through it. And it would remember that resistance value even after the current
was turned of

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1.2 THEORY

Memristor symbol.

The memristor is formally defined as a two-terminal element in which the magnetic flux Φm
between the terminals is a function of the amount of electric charge q that has passed through the
device. Each memristor is characterized by its memristance function describing the charge-
dependent rate of change of flux with charge.

Noting from Faraday's law of induction that magnetic flux is simply the time integral of voltage,
and charge is the time integral of current, we may write the more convenient form

It can be inferred from this that memristance is simply charge-dependent resistance. If M (q (t))
is a constant, then we obtain Ohm's Law R (t) = V (t)/ I (t). If M (q (t)) is nontrivial, however, the
equation is not equivalent because q (t) and M (q (t)) will vary with time. Solving for voltage as a
function of time we obtain

This equation reveals memristance defines a linear relationship between current and voltage, as
long as M does not vary with charge. Of course, nonzero current implies time varying charge.

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Alternating current, however, may reveal the linear dependence in circuit operation by inducing
a measurable voltage without net charge movement as long as the maximum change in q does
not cause much change in M.

Furthermore, the memristor is static if no current is applied. If I (t) = 0, we find V (t) = 0 and
M (t) is constant. This is the essence of the memory effect.

The power consumption characteristic recalls that of a resistor, I2R.

As long as M (q (t)) varies little, such as under alternating current, the memristor will appear as a
resistor. If M (q (t)) increases rapidly, however, current and power consumption will quickly
stop.

2. DETAILED DISCRIPTION

2.1 STRUCTURE OF TITANIUM DIOXIDE MEMRISTOR

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IO

Fig 2.1.1

The HP device is composed of a thin (50 nm) titanium dioxide film between two 5 nm thick
electrodes, two platinum wires

Initially, there are two layers to the titanium dioxide film, TiO2 and TiO2-x. The upper layer
has a slight depletion of oxygen atoms. The oxygen vacancies are donors of electrons which
makes the vacancies themselves positively charged. Stoichiometric TiO2 act as an insulator

(It is a semiconductor) but oxygen deficient TiO2-x is a conductor and have lower resistance
than the stoichiometric compound

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Memristor based multilevel memory 5

2.2 WORKING

Fig 2.2.1

If a positive voltage is applied to the top electrode of the device, it will repel the (also positive)
oxygen vacancies in the TiO2-x layer down into the pure TiO2 layer. That turns the TiO2 layer
into TiO2-x and makes it conductive, thus turning the device on. A negative voltage has the
opposite effect: the vacancies are attracted upward and back out of the TiO2, and thus the thick-
ness of the TiO2 layer increases and the device turns off.
The oxygen deficiencies in the TiO2-x manifest as “bubbles” of oxygen vacancies
scattered throughout the upper layer. A positive voltage on the switch repels the (positive)
oxygen deficiencies in the metallic upper TiO2-x layer, sending them into the insulating TiO2
layer below. That causes the boundary between the two materials to move down, increasing the
percentage of conducting TiO2-x and thus the conductivity of the entire switch. The more
positive voltage is applied, the more conductive the cube becomes.
A negative voltage on the switch attracts the positively charged oxygen bubbles, pulling
them out of the TiO2. The amount of insulating, resistive TiO2 increases, thereby making the
switch as a whole resistive. The more negative voltage is applied, the less conductive the cube
becomes.
What makes this switch special—memristive—is that when the voltage is
turned off, positive or negative, the oxygen bubbles do not migrate. They stay where they are,
which means that the boundary between the two titanium dioxide layers is frozen. That is how
the memristor “remembers” how much voltage was last applied.

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Resistance also depends on the length of time that voltage has been applied

CROSSBAR ARCHITECTURE: A memristor’s structure, shown here in a scanning tunneling

microscope image, will enable dense, stable computer memories.
Fig 2.2.2

 BOW TIES

Leon Chua’s original graph of the hypothetical memristor’s behavior is shown at top right; the
graph of R. Stanley William’s experimental results are shown below. The loops map the
switching behavior of the device: it begins with a high resistance, and as the voltage increases,
the current slowly increases. As charge flows through the device, the resistance drops, and the
current increases more rapidly with increasing voltage until the maximum is reached. Then, as
the voltage decreases, the current decreases but more slowly, because charge is flowing through
the device and the resistance is still dropping. The result is an on-switching loop. When the
voltage turns negative, the resistance of the device increases, resulting in an off-switching loop

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Memristor based multilevel memory 7

Fig 2.2.3

 IMPLIMENTATION OF OTHER TYPES OF MEMRISTORS

 SPINTRONIC MEMRISTOR

Concept of Spintronic memristor is given as, resistance is caused by the spin of electrons in one
section of the device pointing in a different direction than those in another section, creating a
"domain wall," a boundary between the two states. Electrons flowing into the device have a
certain spin, which alters the magnetization state of the device. Changing the magnetization, in
turn, moves the domain wall and changes the device's resistance.

 SPIN TORQUE TRANSFER MAGNETORESISTANCE

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Spin Torque Transfer MRAM is a well-known device that exhibits memristive behavior. The
resistance is dependent on the relative spin orientation between two sides of a magnetic tunnel
junction. This in turn can be controlled by the spin torque induced by the current flowing through
the junction. However, the length of time the current flows through the junction determines the
amount of current needed, i.e., the charge flowing through is the key variable.
Additionally, MgO based magnetic tunnel junctions show memristive behavior based on the drift
of oxygen vacancies within the insulating MgO layer (resistive switching). Therefore, the
combination of spin transfer torque and resistive switching leads naturally to a second-order
memristive system with w=(w1,w2) where w1 describes the magnetic state of the magnetic tunnel
junction and w2 denotes the resistive state of the MgO barrier. Note that in this case the change of
w1 is current-controlled (spin torque is due to a high current density) whereas the change of w2 is
voltage-controlled (the drift of oxygen vacancies is due to high electric fields).

 POLYMERIC MEMRISTOR

Juri H. Krieger and Stuart M. Spitzer claim to have developed a polymeric memristor before the
titanium dioxide memristor more recently announced.

There work describes the process of dynamic doping of polymer and inorganic dielectric-like
materials in order to improve the switching characteristics and retention required to create
functioning nonvolatile memory cells. Described is the use of a special passive layer between
electrode and active thin films, which enhances the extraction of ions from the electrode. It is
possible to use fast ion conductor as this passive layer, which allows to significantly decreasing
the ionic extraction field

 RESONANT TUNNELING DIODE MEMRISTOR

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1994, F. A. Buot and A. K. Rajagopal demonstrated that a 'bow-tie' current-voltage (I-V)

characteristics occurs in AlAs/GaAs/AlAs quantum-well diodes containing special doping design
of the spacer layers in the source and drain regions, in agreement with the published
experimental results This 'bow-tie' current-voltage (I-V) characteristic is sine qua non of a
memristor although the term memristor is not explicitly mentioned in their papers. No magnetic
interaction is involved in the analysis of the 'bow-tie' I-V characteristics

 3-TERMINAL MEMRISTOR (MEMISTOR)

Although the memristor is defined in terms of a 2-terminal circuit element, there was an
implementation of a 3-terminal device called a memistor developed by Bernard Widrow in 1960.
Memistors formed basic components of a neural network architecture called ADALINE
developed by Widrow and Ted Hoff the memistor was described as follows:

Like the transistor, the memistor is a 3-terminal element. The conductance between two of the
terminals is controlled by the time integral of the current in the third, rather than its instantaneous
value as in the transistor. Reproducible elements have been made which are continuously
variable (thousands of possible analog storage levels), and which typically vary in resistance
from 100 ohms to 1 ohm, and cover this range in about 10 seconds with several mille amperes of
plating current. Adaptation is accomplished by direct current while sensing the neuron logical
structure is accomplished nondestructively by passing alternating currents through the arrays of
memistor cells.

Since the conductance was described as being controlled by the time integral of current as in
Chua's theory of the memristor, the memistor of Widrow may be considered as a form of
memristor having three instead of two terminals. However, one of the main limitations of
Widrow's memistor was that they were made from an electroplating cell rather than as a solid-
state circuit element. Solid-state circuit elements were required to achieve the scalability of the

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integrated circuit which was gaining popularity around the same time as the invention of
Widrow's memistor.

2.3 ADVANTAGES

When you turn off the voltage, the memristor remembers its most recent resistance until the
next time you turn it on, whether that happens a day later or a year later
This freezing property suits memristors brilliantly for computer memory. The ability to
indefinitely store resistance values means that a memristor can be used as a nonvolatile memory.
That might not sound like very much, but go ahead and pop the battery out of your laptop, right
now—no saving, no quitting, nothing. You’d lose your work, of course. But if your laptop were
built using a memory based on memristors, when you popped the battery back in, your screen
would return to life with everything exactly as you left it: no lengthy reboot, no half-dozen auto-
recovered files.
There are several advantages of the memristor memory over conventional transistor-based
memories. One is its strikingly small size. Though memristor is still at its early development
stage, its size is at most one tenths of its RAM counterparts. If the fabrication technology for
memristor is improved, the size and advantage could be even more significant. Another feature
of the memristor is its incomparable potential to store analog information which enables the
memristor to keep multiple bits of information in a memory cell. Besides these features, the
memristor is also an ideal device for implementing synaptic weights in artificial neural networks

Williams' solid-state memristors can be combined into devices called crossbar

latches, which could replace transistors in future computers, taking up a much smaller area.

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They can also be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which would allow greater data
density than hard drives with access times potentially similar to DRAM, replacing both
components HP prototyped a crossbar latch memory using the devices that can fit 100 gigabits
in a square centimeter, and has designed a highly scalable 3D design (consisting of up to 1000
layers or 1 petabit in a cubic CM) has reported that its version of the memristor is currently
about one-tenth the speed of DRAM . The devices' resistance would be read with alternating
current so that they do not affect the stored value.

2.4 PROBLEMS

Despite many favorable features, memristors have several weaknesses in practice. One weakness
comes from the nonlinearity in the Ø vs. q curve which makes it difficult to determine the proper
pulse width for achieving a desired resistance value. If the nonlinearity is spatially variant in the
die of a chip which is common in the fabrication process, the difficulty could be very serious.
Another difficulty comes from the property of the memristor which integrates any kind of signals
including noise that appeared at the memristor and results in the memristors being perturbed
from its original pre-set values.

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Memristor based multilevel memory 12

The principle of the memristor is based on the nonlinear property of basic circuit elements. In the
relationships defining basic circuit elements, charge is defined as the time integral of current,
namely,

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Thus, the resistance can be interpreted as the slope at an operating point on the Ø- q curve. If the
Ø- q curve is nonlinear, the resistance will vary with the operating point. For instance, if the
Ø - q curve is the nonlinear function
Shown in Fig. 2.4.1, its small-signal resistance can be obtained by re-plotting it as a function of
Øq in the R vs .Ø plane as in Fig. 2.4.2.
Since the flux Ø is obtained by integrating the voltage, the resistance of the memristor can be
Controlled by applying a voltage signal across the memristor, where

Fig 2.4.1

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Fig 2.4.2

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Memristor based multilevel memory 15

Fig 2.4.3
The above memristance tuning method assumes an ideal operating condition. In practice, there
are some problems that must be overcome. The first problem is caused by the nonlinearity
between the applied voltage and the corresponding resistance. Suppose the resistance
characteristics of the memristors is different from each other as shown in Fig. 2.4.3, where the
resistance R d is obtained at different values of Ø such as Ø1
Ø2 and Ø3. If the same magnitude of voltage pulses is chosen, then the durations of the pulse
widths for obtaining the same resistance will be different depending on the characteristics of the
memristors.
Another problem comes from the fact that the operating point and its associated memristance
would be changed whenever some voltage is applied across the memristor. The voltage applied
for read-out or even noise voltages would be integrated which causes the flux Ø to be altered.
Again, this causes the programmed resistance to be varied. Chua had suggested applying a
voltage doublet with equal positive and negative read-out pulses to resolve such problem.
However, the problem remains if the positive and the negative pulses are not perfectly identical
due to the non-ideal pulse-generation circuits.

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2.5 REFERENCE RESISTANCE ARRAY-BASED MULTILEVEL MEMORY OF

MEMRISTOR

The proposed method has the operating point of the memristor be maintained its desired location
(or resistance value) utilizing a set of pre-determined multiple resistance levels. Fig. 2.5.1 shows
the basic idea of the proposed method, where the resistance array to be referenced and the
memristor to be programmed (tuned) are shown. The goal is to have the memristor keep any of
the resistance level selected from the resistance array. If a predetermined magnitude of the
current pulse Is (t) is applied to the resistance array, different levels of voltages V k will appear at
each node of the resistance array. The same current pulse Is (t ) is also applied to the memristor.

Fig 2.5.1

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The programming (tuning) of the memristor is performed by applying additional current pulses
to the memristor with the appropriate directions until the voltage of the memristor equals to that
of the selected node voltage in the resistance array. If the voltage of the memristor reaches that of
the selected node, the resistance value of the memristor becomes the same as the partial sum of
the resistance from the ground to the selected node of the resistance array.
This idea is employed in both the “write-in” and the “read-out/restoration” circuits. Detailed
description of these circuits will be presented in the following sections.

2.6 MEMRISTOR WRITE-IN CIRCUIT

Fig 2.6.1

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The memristor write-in circuit is used to bias the memristor at a desired resistance level. The
critical write-in circuit is shown in Fig 2.6.1. The first step is to choose the write-in memristor
and the resistance value to be memorized by turning on one of the switches in switch array S1 of
Fig2.6.1. and the corresponding switch pair in switch array S4 respectively. Then, an initial
current pulse I s(t) is applied at the drain of the transistor Q1 so that its mirrored current pulses
appear at transistors Q2 and Q3. With this current pulse, negative voltages appear at both the
selected reference nodes and at the output terminal V out of the memristors.
Suppose the selected memristance M j is less than the referenced sum of the resistances
Rk sum in Fig2.6.1. In this particular case, Diffk+ is smaller than Diffk- sinceVout (Tp) is less
negative than that of Vk (Tp). These Diffk outputs caused the comparator C1 to generate a
positive pulse. Note that the negative and the positive output terminals of Diffk are linked to the
positive and the negative input terminals of C1 respectively. As a consequence, switch S3 is
turned on. Ø such increased flux Ø, the increment of the memristance can be obtained with a
monotonically increasing function via the R vs. Ø graph in Fig 2.6.1. As a consequence, the
memristor voltage decreases toward the selected reference level.
The processing from the above voltage difference computation repeats until the difference
between Vk (Tp ) and Vout (Tp) becomes zero, thereby completing the “write-in” processing of
the reference resistance Rk sum

On the other hand, when the selected memristance M j is larger than the referenced sum
Rk sum of the resistances, the memristance of the selected memristor is decreased and the
memristor voltage is increased toward the selected reference level through the opposite
procedure mentioned above.
The above comparison between the voltages and the adjustment of the memristance are repeated
until the memristor voltage is equal to its selected reference voltage level.

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2.7 MEMRISTOR READ-OUT/RESTORATION CIRCUIT

Fig 2.7.1

The memristor read-out/ restoration circuit is used to read the content of the memristor by
applying an appropriate integrating current or voltage. The critical function of this circuit is to
guarantee the memristor will stay at a set of fixed values without being perturbed when a read-
out voltage or a noise voltage is applied across the memristor. To achieve this goal, a single
compensating pulse is applied to have the memristance changed toward the closest reference
resistance after the initial read-out pulse is applied. The read-out circuit is the same as the write-
in circuit except the negative signal excluding circuit (N_Excld), MIN A and MIN B circuits as
shown in Fig.2.7.1 . The N_Excld is the circuit to choose only the positive signals from Diffk+ or

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Diffk- using the negative signal excluding circuit N_Excld by comparing between the DC
voltage and the output of the Diff circuit. The circuits MIN A and MIN B together with the
comparator C1 are used to choose the smallest absolute value among all
Diff k+ and Diffk- signals.
If the output of MIN A is smaller than that of MIN B, the memristor voltage is higher than that
of its closest reference voltage (with M j< Rk sum)
In this case, the memristance M j should be increased. On the other hand, if the output of the
MIN A is larger than that of MIN B, then the memristor voltage is smaller than that of its closest
reference voltage (with M j>Rk sum). In this case, M j should be decreased.
The above adjustment of the memristor is executed only once during each read-out processing.

2.8 SIMULATIONS

The write-in circuit and the read-out/restoration circuit of the proposed method have been
simulated extensively. All circuit components are assumed to be ideal. The simulations aim to
check if the memristors are written accurately with the prescribed resistance levels and if the
memristor contents are adjusted properly when they are altered by noise or read-out voltages.
Also, it focuses on whether the proposed circuits are working well when memristors with slightly
different characteristics are used in practice. All memristors used in this simulation are
mathematical models because physical memristor devices with prescribed .Ø vs Q
Characteristics are not commercially available at the moment.
The first simulation is designed to test the write-in operation of three memristors with slightly
different characteristics. To have this simulation be as close to real experiments as possible,
scientists chose the characteristic curve of the HP memristor and two contrived variations. This
simulation consists of writing a fixed reference resistance of 18 kΩ on the three memristors
which have different Ø-q characteristics. The initial values of the memristors are randomly
selected. Fig. 2.8.1shows the changes in the R- Ø
Values while repeated writing pulses are applied.
The relatively larger movements of the lower points of each characteristic curve are due to the
big difference between the reference resistance and the initial memristance. Note that the

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relatively larger movement of the lower points of each compensation pulse width generated by
the pulse width modulator (PWM) is proportional to the difference between the reference
resistance and that of the memristor. Also observe that, depending on its characteristics, different
amounts ΔØ of the flux Ø are required to write and maintain the same resistance level on each
memristor. Despite significant differences in the 3 memristor characteristics, the proposed
method is able to write exactly the same resistance level in all 3 memristors

Fig 2.8.1

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Extensive simulations for testing the write-in function for multiple levels have also been made.
The number of levels have chosen to write-in the memristors is 8 and the model of the
memristor used in this simulations is chosen from the HP publication whose resistance ranges
from about 8K Ohm to 25.5 K Ohm. The memristors are allowed to have 8 equally spaced
resistance levels of {8.0, 10.5, 13, 15.5, 18, 20.5, 23, 25.5} K Ohm as in Fig. 2.8.2. Big red dots
are the desired writing levels and the initial resistance values are selected randomly. As shown in
the fig. 2.8.2, all memristor converge successfully to their desired values during repeated
applications of the write-in pulses to 20 memristor models.

Fig 2.8.2

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Similar simulations have been made for the read-out/restoration circuit. The goal of this circuit is
to have the memristors to stay at fixed values without being perturbed when a read-out voltage or
any noise voltage is applied across the memristor by applying a single compensating pulse after
the initial read-out pulse. Extensive simulations on 8 memristors with 8 slightly different
characteristics have been made. The memristors are perturbed initially by a maximum of 10%
from their reference resistances. Fig. 2.8.3 shows traces of the resistance on the R-Ø curve of a
typical memristor. The big red dots are the desired levels and the small cross symbols are the
traces of the resistance changes while the read-out/restoration operation is performed. Note that a
single compensation pulse is generated during each read-out processing. Observe that the
resistance values in Fig. 2.8.3 converge to their closest levels with the read-out pulses.

Fig 2.8.3

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3. FUTURE SCOPE

Combined with transistors in a hybrid chip, memristors could radically improve the
performance of digital circuits without shrinking transistors. Using transistors more efficiently
could in turn give us another decade, at least, of Moore’s Law performance improvement,
without requiring the costly and increasingly difficult doublings of transistor density on chips. In
the end, memristors might even become the cornerstone of new analog circuits that compute
using an architecture much like that of the brain. Memristor’s potential goes far beyond instant-
on computers to embrace one of the grandest technology challenges: mimicking the functions of
a brain. Within a decade, memristors could let us emulate, instead of merely simulate, networks
of neurons and synapses. Many research groups have been working toward a brain in silico:
IBM’s Blue Brain project, Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm, and Harvard’s
Center for Brain Science are just three. However, even a mouse brain simulation in real time
involves solving an astronomical number of coupled partial differential equations. A digital com-
puter capable of coping with this staggering workload would need to be the size of a small city,
and powering it would require several dedicated nuclear power plants.

Memristors can be made extremely small, and they function like synapses. Using them, we will
be able to build analog electronic circuits that could fit in a shoebox and function according to
the same physical principles as a brain. Memristors can potentially learn like synapses and be
used to build human brain-like computers

Two CMOS circuits connected by a memristor is analogous to two neurons in the brain
connected by a synapse. It is thought that synaptic connections strengthen as the neurons either
side fire and so brain 'circuits' are established which constitutes the basis of human learning.

Wei Lu, a University of Michigan scientist connected two CMOS circuits by a silver and silicon
Memristor and powered the two CMOS circuits on and off with varying time gaps between them.

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Memristor based multilevel memory 25

The memristor alters its state differently depending on the timing of the powering of the CMOS
circuits.

This is said to be the same behavior as that shown by synapses, called "spike timing plastic
dependency", which is thought to be the possible basis for memory and learning in human and
other mammalian brains.

The synaptic connection between neurons becomes stronger or weaker, as the time gap between
when they are stimulated becomes shorter or longer. In the same way, the shorter the time
interval the lower the resistance of the memristor to electricity flowing across it between the two
CMOS circuits.

A 20 millisecond time interval between the two CMOS circuits caused a resistance level roughly
half that of a 40 millisecond gap. Lu said: "Cells that fire together wire together... The memristor
mimics synaptic action.

"We show that we can use voltage timing to gradually increase or decrease the electrical
conductance in this memristor-based system. In our brains, similar changes in synapse
conductance essentially give rise to long term memory.

A hybrid circuit—containing many connected memristors and transistors—could help us

research actual brain function and disorders. Such a circuit might even lead to machines that can
recognize patterns the way humans can, in those critical ways computers can’t—for example,
picking a particular face out of a crowd even if it has changed significantly since our last
memory of it.

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There are several advantages of the memristor memory over conventional transistor-based
memories. One is its strikingly small size. Though memristor is still at its early development
stage, its size is at most one tenths of its RAM counterparts. If the fabrication technology for
memristor is improved, the size and advantage could be even more significant. Another feature
of the memristor is its incomparable potential to store analog information which enables the
memristor to keep multiple bits of information in a memory cell, Besides these features, the
memristor is also an ideal device for implementing synaptic weights in artificial neural networks.

HP already has plans to implement memristors in a new type of non-volatile memory which
could eventually replace flash and other memory systems.

Recently, a simple electronic circuit consisting of an LC network and a memristor was

used to model experiments on adaptive behavior of unicellular organisms. It was shown that the
electronic circuit subjected to a train of periodic pulses learns and anticipates the next pulse to
come, similarly to the behavior of slime molds Physarumpolycephalum subjected to periodic
changes of environment. Such a learning circuit may find applications, e.g., in pattern recognition

4. CONCLUSION

The reference resistance array-based multilevel memristor memory is proposed in this paper. The
idea has been implemented with two circuits namely the write-in and the read-out circuits.
Simulation of the write-in circuit shows that the memristors memorize the desired discrete
resistance levels regardless of their characteristic differences. In read-out simulation, contents of
the memristors move toward their original values from the deviated ones whenever the read-out
processing is performed.
The proposed multilevel idea of the memristor together with its intrinsic feature of small size
would make the memristor to be a powerful memory device. Also, if the number of multilevel of

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memory is increased, the memristor could be an ideal element for synaptic weight
implementation since the synaptic multiplication can be performed simply by Ohm’s law V=IR
in the memristor.
Memristor is the fourth fundamental component the arrangement of
few fundamental circuit components form the basis of almost all of the electronic devices we use
in our everyday life. Thus the discovery of a brand new fundamental circuit element is something
not to be taken lightly and has the potential to open the door to a brand new type of electronics.
HP already has plans to implement memristors in a new type of non-volatile memory which
could eventually replace flash and other memory systems

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5. REFERENCES

[1] Hyongsuk Kim Sah, M.P. Changju Yang Chua, L.O.”Memristor based multilevel
memory” Cellular Nanoscale Networks and Their Applications (CNNA), 2010 12th
International Workshop, 3-5 Feb. 2010, pp1-6

[2] R. Stanley Williams “How we found the Missing Memristor” Spectrum, IEEE,
Volume: 45, Issue: 12, Dec 2008, pp 28-35

[3] Memristor-From Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org

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