Details of an entirely new kind of electronic device, which could make chips smaller and far more efficient, have been outlined by scientists. The new components, described by scientists at Hewlett-Packard, are known as "memristors".
The devices were proposed 40 years ago but have only recently been fabricated, the team wrote in the journal Nature. They have already been used to build novel transistors - tiny switches that are the building blocks of all chips.
"Now we have this type of device we have a broader palette with which to paint our circuits," Professor Stan Williams, one of the team, told the BBC last year.
Total recall
Memristors were first proposed in 1971 by Professor Leon Chua, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are the "fourth" basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors.
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Getting more from Moore's Law - Future computing
"I never thought I'd live long enough to see this happen," Professor Chua told the Associated Press.
"I'm thrilled because it's almost like vindication. Something I did is not just in my imagination, it's fundamental."
The memristors are so called because they have the ability to "remember" the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off. This could allow researchers to build new kinds of computer memory that would would not require powering up.
Today, most PCs use dynamic random access memory (DRAM) which loses data when the power is turned off. But a computer built with memristors could allow PCs that start up instantly, laptops that retain sessions after the battery dies, or mobile phones that can last for weeks without needing a charge.
"If you turn on your computer it will come up instantly where it was when you turned it off," Professor Williams told Reuters.
"That is a very interesting potential application, and one that is very realistic."
