High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The cross-bar latch is a technology invented by Hewlett-Packard in October 2001, that potentially could replace transistors in some applications. Transistors are essential components of logic gates and memory cells in digital electronic systems. The historical trend for computer systems to become smaller and more powerful over the years is mostly due to techniques for producing ever smaller transistors. The memristor devices that make up a cross bar latch potentially can be made far smaller than any transistor.