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The researchers said memristors can lead to computer systems with memories that are not erased when power is lost, do not need to be booted up, are very low-power hungry, and, associate information "in a manner similar to that of the human brain."

The HP researchers also said that memristor-based computers could help the momentum toward "cloud computing," in which applications and data are stored throughout many servers in-house, or on the Internet and could lead to a new kind of computer memory that could complement or even replace the common DRAM which does not store information when the power is off.

Memristor-based memory can also lead to fundamentally different ways of using computer memory - memristor technology can recall and make associations between events that are similar to how a human brain recognises patterns.

HP said that this enhanced ability to deal with patterns could "allow computers to makes decisions based on past data. This might include, for instance, the development of a more intelligent microwave that knows the heating times that you prefer for different kinds of foods".