ial solutions, one of which is the memristor. The theory of resistance with memory was put forward in 1971 in a paper by Professor Leon Chua, from the University of California Berkeley and was premised on the basis that circuit design has three elements, a resistor, capacitor and inductor but four variables with the fourth being a combination of resistance and memory not realisable from any combination of the other three elements. The device remained as a theoretical concept up until 2008 when HP Labs2 demonstrated a nanotechnology scaled titanium oxide structure with atoms that moved when a voltage is applied. The device opens up the prospect of a step function increase in the energy efficiency of computing and switching systems and the opportunity to create memories that retain information without the need for power. http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ee129/sp10/handouts/IEEE_SpectrumMemristor1201.pdf 1 2 http://www.hpl.hp.com/. Making Telecoms Work: From Technical Innovation to Commercial Success, First Edition. Geoff Varrall. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Making Telecoms Work It would appear that very small devices constructed as 3D structures at the molecular level may well be the key enablers for large and/or complex products connected to large and/or complex networks and may make the delivery of 3D images and voice and audio and text and positioning information to portable and mobile devices via mobile broadband networks more cost and energy economic than presently expected. The only problem is that it will probably be at least twenty years before these components are available commercially, SO in the meantime we will just need to make do with existing available technologies. So let's look at a present high-end product and see how the hardware form factor determines software form factor and how the combination of hardware and software form factor determines the user experience. 7.2 Plane Switching, Displays and Visual Acuity Unsurprisingly, Japanese and Korean TV and 