MEMRISTORS

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

IN

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

Submitted

By

S.Y.Viswanath 08881A0460

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

VARDHAMAN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

(Approved by AICTE, Affiliated to JNTUH & Accredited by NBA)

2011 - 12

MEMRISTORS
1
 A

Project Report

Submitted in the Partial Fulfilment of the

Requirements

for the Award of the Degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

IN

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

Submitted

By

S.Y.Viswanath 08881A0460

Under the Guidance of

G.Kalyanchakravarthy

Assistant Professor

Department of ECE

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

VARDHAMAN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

(Approved by AICTE, Affiliated to JNTUH & Accredited by NBA)

2010 - 11

TABLE OF CONTENTS

2
ABSTRACT 4

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION 5

SECTION 1.1 : MEMRISTOR 5

SECTION 1.2 : THEORY 6

CHAPTER 2 : DETAILED DESCRIPTION 8

SECTION 2.1 : STRUCTURE OF TITANIUM DIODE MEMRISTOR 8

SECTION 2.2 : WORKING 9
SECTION 2.3 : IMPLEMENTATION OF OTHER TYPES OF MEMRISTORS 12
SECTION 2.4 : ADVANTAGES 14
SECTION 2.5 : PROBLEMS 15
SECTION 2.6 : ARRAY BASED MULTILEVEL MEMORY OF MEMRISTOR 20
SECTION 2.7 : MEMRISTOR WRITE-IN CIRCUIT 21
SECTION 2.8 : MEMRISTOR READ-OUT/RESTORATION CIRCUIT 23
SECTION 2.9: SIMULATONS 24

CHAPTER 3 : FUTURE SCOPE 28

CHAPTER 4 : CONCLUSION 31

CHAPTER 5 : BIBILOGRAPHY 32

3
 ABSTRACT

Typically electronics has been defined in terms of three fundamental

elements such as resistors, capacitors and inductors. These three elements are used to define the
four fundamental circuit variables which are electric current, voltage, charge and magnetic flux.
Resistors are used to relate current to voltage, capacitors to relate voltage to charge, and
inductors to relate current to magnetic flux, but there was no element which could relate charge
to magnetic flux.
To overcome this missing link, scientists came up with a new element called
Memristor. These Memristor has the properties of both a memory element and a resistor (hence
wisely named as Memristor). Memristor is being called as the fourth fundamental component,
hence increasing the importance of its innovation

4
 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 behaviour 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

5
after the current was turned off.

6
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.

7
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.

8
 2. DETAILED DISCRIPTION

2.1 Structure of Titanium Diode Memristor

IO

Fig 2.1.1

9
 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

2.2 Working

Fig 2.2.1

10
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 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.
Resistance also depends on the length of time that voltage has been applied

A memristor’s structure, shown here in a scanning tunnelling 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

Fig 2.2.3

2.3 Implementation 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 Magnetoresistance

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 Tunnelling Diode Memristor

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

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
integrated circuit which was gaining popularity around the same time as the invention of
Widrow's memistor.
2.4 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.

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.

2.5 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.
 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,
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
Fig 2.4.2
 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.
2.6 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
 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.

2.7 Memristor Write-In Circuit

Fig 2.6.1
 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.
2.8 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 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.

2.9 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 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
 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
 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
 3. FUTURE SCOPE

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

This is said to be the same behaviour 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.

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 memristor 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 behaviour 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 behaviour of slime moulds 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 should make the memristor to be a powerful memory device. Also, if the number of
multilevel of 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. 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
 5. BIBILIOGRAPHY

• 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.

• Memrisotr from Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor

• http://www.memristor.org/reference/research/13/what-are-memristors

• www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/apr-jun/memristor.html