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Abstract for Seminar

Computers will soon be the most prevalent electronic device on our planet. Green Computing is defined as the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently, taking into account economic viability, social responsibility, and environmental impact [1].

Memristor theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua in 1971 [2]. Chua strongly believed that a fourth device existed to provide conceptual symmetry with the resistor, inductor, and capacitor. 37 years later, in 2008, a HP team led by Williams announced the discovery of a memristor based on a nano-scale thin film of titanium dioxide [3]. Most recently, we found memristor's a peculiar effect that the switching takes place with a time delay (we named it "the delayed switching") [4].

In this work, we design a new computer memory in which this delayed switching effect is used to selectively address any desired memory cell in a crossbar array. It is demonstrated that memristors can be packed at least twice as densely as semiconductors, achieving a significant breakthrough in storage density. In such a design, memristors consume much less power as a memristor is non-volatile.

[1] Green Computing, Wikipedia
[2] Chua, Leon, "Memristor - The Missing Circuit Element", IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory, 1971
[3] D. Strukov, G. Snider, D. Stewart, S. Williams, "The missing memristor found", Nature, 2008
[4] F.Z. Wang, Na Helian, Sining Wu, Guan Lim, Yike Guo & Andy Parker, Delayed Switching in Memristors and Memristive Systems, IEEE Electron Device Letters, Volume 31, Issue 7, 2010

School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF

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Last Updated: 18/06/2010