Solid state on steroids? HP breakthrough could further reduce tech power consumption
Had intended to write about this development after it had a chance to seep into my brain a bit. But since my blogging colleague Dana Blankenhorn has already done the honors, here goes. The crux of the matter is that Hewlett-Packard researchers have developed something it is calling the "memristor," which is a resistor that includes a memory component.
The reason this is important from a broad perspective is because it will bring more intelligence to storage devices and other embedded systems, rather than requiring a separate specialized central processing unit for certain tasks.
The reason that this matters from a green perspective is that memristors require less energy to run than current solid-state technologies, while potentially storing at least twice as much data. Of course, it will probably be years before the cost dynamics make for widespread usage, but that's a matter for many, many follow-up stories as this technology finds its way into products over the next decade.