A warm welcome to you lebowski101. You aren't late for the party, the guests are still arriving and this is gonna be one hell of a shindig...For some reason, that HP link is a dud.

I had similar thoughts about the memristor and POET's potential in that area of development.

Here's something from George Dvorsky on the potential of the memristor technology that discusses Leon Chua's discoveries in that area:

"Berkeley professor Leon Chua predicted a revolution in electrical circuits — and his vision has finally come true. Traditionally, circuits are constructed with capacitors, resistors, and inductors. But Chua speculated that there could be a fourth component, what he called the memristor (short for memory resistor). What sets this technological innovation apart is that, unlike a resistor, it can "remember" charges even after power is lost. As a result, this would allow the memristor to store information. This has given rise to the suggestion that it could eventually become a part of computer memory — including non-volatile solid-state memory with significantly greater densities than traditional hard drives (as much as one)petabit per cm)."

here is the link:

http://io9.com/5942574/9-overlooked-technologies-that-could-transform-the-world3

HP developed it further in 2008 and this is outlined in the second link to Cade Metz' article:

"More than 35 years ago, when the world assumed that circuits were crafted from three basic building blocks, a man named Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth.

The capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor, he said, would be joined by something called the memristor. Today, scientists at HP Labs announced that this prediction was right on the money.

After a good five years of work, HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams and his team have actually built a memristor - a resistor that stores information even after losing power. With this new electrical building block, chip manufacturers could reinvent modern memory technology, delivering machines that are far more efficient and that boot instantly."

here is the link:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/01/hp_labs_unveils_memsistor/

The implications for memristor implementation are huge, especially in the area of cloud computing. And to think, this is only ONE avenue of the potential for POET development.

Yes, HP is a short name...

SnackRat