Reply #8: Also, the issue of "no gain" is more important than the snippet lets on [View All]

A transistor makes a great amplifier (i.e., it produces a signal boost), so that nearly indistinguishable effect from those squiggly lines on a phonograph, that weak radio signal, or that microscopic magnetic effect on your hard disk, is amplified to be useful, and more importantly, transmitted around to those people (and devices) which need it. Now, transistors are also great switches (really another take on the amplification effect) and thus great memory devices. The bonus is, you can read it AND transmit the result with "high gain", or amplified, and thus it can get to those other destinations (you lose signal over distance/time so the initial one has to be strong).

The "memristor" being described in the article is, on the other hand, a "no gain" device, so whatever you read must subsequently be amplified (i.e., with a transistor). Superconductive devices might help (no resistance loss of signal, but still great interference loss), but that is only conjecture. It is likely that this will prove to be useful in terms of minimizing power use for large amounts of high speed storage (those transistors have to be constantly powered to work, and they lose their "memory" and have to be reset each time you "read" them), and that assumes the signal amplification issue does not wipe out any savings on power, or as related to power, size.