The Community for Technology Leaders
Issue No. 01 - January (2009 vol. 58)
ISSN: 0018-9340
pp: 60-68
Yeow Meng Chee , Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Alan C. H. Ling , University of Vermont, Burlington
ABSTRACT
Although prone to fabrication error, the nanowire crossbar is a promising candidate compoent for next generation nanometer-scale circuits. In the nanowire crossbar architecture, nanowires are addressed by controlling voltages on the mesowires. For area efficiency, we are interested in the maximum number of nanowires $N(m,e)$ that can be addressed by $m$ mesowires, in the face of up to $e$ fabrication errors. Asymptotically tight bounds on $N(m,e)$ are established in this paper. In particular, it is shown that $N(m,e) = \Theta(2^m / m^{e+1/2})$. Interesting observations are made on the equivalence between this problem and the problem of constructing optimal EC/AUED codes, superimposed distance codes, pooling designs, and diffbounded set systems. Results in this paper also improve upon those in the EC/AUEC codes literature.
INDEX TERMS
Systems and Information Theory, General, Control Structure Reliability, Testing, and Fault-Tolerance
CITATION
Yeow Meng Chee, Alan C. H. Ling, "Limit on the Addressability of Fault-Tolerant Nanowire Decoders", IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 58, no. , pp. 60-68, January 2009, doi:10.1109/TC.2008.130