This looks cool but I'm somewhat skeptical. I would be more interested in seeing what problem the system solves better or decently (say even MNIST) rather than how it was built using memristors.
There is a lesson from IBM trying to mimic a rat's brain -- that is you try to solve a problem rather than just burn power.
What are you talking about? They build a 12x12 crossbar. The best you can do with it is to implement a single layer perceptron to classify 3x3 pixel patterns. Once they figure out how to scale it up, they will implement a larger network.
There is a lesson from IBM trying to mimic a rat's brain -- that is you try to solve a problem rather than just burn power.