IEEE’s Spectrum magazine has an excellent article about memristors and their history. This is an excellent overview piece written for a wider audience. It clearly explains how the memristor came to be, why it matters, and what exactly it is.
It’s worth noting that Memristors have relation to cellular automata and neural networks, at least in originators. Leon Chua is one of the main researchers behind Cellular Neural Networks and predicted the existence of memristors. Also of note is the typical path of MIT, U of Illinois Champaign and Berkley – shared by many others working in similar disciplines.
Methinks the relationship between memristors and other cellular automata like theoretical models is much deeper than just the research instituations. Wolfram mentioned the possibility of a parallel computing architecture based on CAs, perhaps the memristors plays some role in all of this.
Anyhoo, read the article. Memristors will be significant in computing design.
