Unlike traditional transistors, which can switch between only two states (0 or 1) and which form the basis of modern computers, memsistors offer a gradient of values, much more like your brain, the original analog computer. They also can “remember” these states so they can easily recreate the same signal for the same received current multiple times over. What the researchers did here was borrow a concept from metallurgy: When metallurgists want to change the properties of a metal, they combine it with another that has that desired property, to create an alloy. Similarly, the researchers here found an element they could combine with the silver they use as the memristor’s positive electrode, in order to make it better able to consistently and reliably transfer ions along even a very thin conduction channel. That’s what enabled the team to create super small chips that contain tens of thousands of memristors that can nonetheless not only reliably recreate images from “memory,” but also perform inference tasks like improving the detail of, or blurring the original image on command, better than other, previous memristors created by other scientists.