By the latter part of the decade, Williams said he hopes to see memristors used in chips to do computation, as well as storage.

"This is potentially a major game changer," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "If they can get this to market timely and priced well, it could change the face of personal electronics."

Martin Reynolds, an analyst with Gartner Inc., said this could mean big changes for the flash memory industry alone.

"If they can meet their targets - and it sounds like they can - memristors could start to appear in 2013, and rapidly take share from flash," he added. "Users won't see anything - just the continued cost-decline of memory.... The devices [using it] will be smaller and more powerful anyway. This is one of several technologies that could matter."

Olds noted that the memristors offer considerable advantage on the logistical side. They are seven to nine times smaller than flash memory, meaning that more storage can be jammed into a much smaller space.