Researchers at Rice University and HP report advances in solid-state memory

New York Times: Certain materials change their resistance in response to a change in voltage. That simple switching behavior, which arises from the material itself, could form the basis of new, compact computer memory—provided the material is cheap, robust, and convenient to use. In the New York Times, John Markoff reports a recent development toward that goal. Jun Yao of Rice University and his collaborators have built a switch out of silicon dioxide, a bedrock material of current computers whose resistive switching was previously unsuspected. Markoff also reports that an independent team from Hewlett-Packard is set to announce an advance toward the same goal but with a different "memristor" technology.