More bad news for HP's "memristor" prospects

This week has been particularly bleak with respect to the future of the Hewlett-Packard company including a plunge in the stock price to new lows, the failure of HP's smartphone and tablet products, and the apparent desire of HP management to sell off their PC business entirely (link). It will be interesting to see what effect this has on HP's plan to market the "memristor" (i.e. memory resistor) in collaboration with Hynix as a form of RRAM (i.e. resistance RAM).

As I pointed out in an earlier blog entry it is readily apparent to anyone who actually bothers to study the patents related to memory resistors that HP is actually a latecomer to RRAM technology with practically no credible patents of value. In fact, Samsung (US 7417271) and Sharp (US 7796416) both have patents which HP would have to license to practice the TiO2 version of memory resistors for which HP's researchers took credit. It seems to me that even though HP has been very successful at taking credit for memory resistor technology from legitimate companies and innovators it appears increasingly unlikely that HP will be in a position to market the technology.

A detailed analysis of memory resistor patents, companies, and potential applications is available at this link.