released information today on a research project dubbed the "memristor," which is a resistor with memory. A resistor constricts current flow inside a circuit and is a key part of nearly every electrical device in use today.

Though the memristor was developed to expand devices' memory capacity, researchers discovered that it also can be used for logic computations.

That means that within six to eight years the memristor could be used to handle both memory and logic in the same chip at the same time. And that, say analysts, will bring dramatic change to the computer industry.

"Memristors have the potential to turn the computing world upside down," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Because they are both processor and storage, they act much like synapses in the human brain. Networked together, they look to be very much faster at tasks, like pattern recognition, than conventional computers. Because of the memory aspect, they can 'learn' much better than today's systems."

Still in the research stage, the memristor is designed to be added to chips, giving a sort of turbo boost, according to Stan Williams, a senior fellow with HP Labs. While some reports today have said that the memristor is designed to , which is one of the key building blocks of the chip, Williams said that's not the case.