[cbennett]

In truth it is. To practitioners in the field building circuits or doing simulations with nanodevices, this is somewhat of a tiresome debate.

To give some background, Leon Chua made certain claims about a hypothetical fourth circuit element and these debates largely stem back to claims about circuit analysis and mathematics. Basically his models predict a perfect device which, to my knowledge , has not been experimentally realized (to the contrary of HP's claims).

However , the funny thing is it doesn't really matter. We don't need a perfect memristor to build interesting and useful nanoionic and nano-redox circuits performing non-linear computational tasks. As modelers though, we do need to be careful making ideal claims about eternal non-volatility and device life (of course). Many point out that to the contrary of being ideal, these devices are extremely variable and imperfect- which is true. Anything built using nanofab techniques at the academic level (excluding semi-con industrial processes) will be..

Btw, If you want more physics depth on this , I can recommend any paper or book by Waser. They are all good. http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-3527334173...

Edit: adding a link to the first book chapter of aforementioned book I found which is already rather good. https://application.wiley-vch.de/books/sample/3527334173_c01...