Effect of Conductance Variability on Resistor-Logic Demultiplexers for Nanoelectronics

On a mixed-scale nanoelectronic crossbar, in which nanowires cross CMOS-scale wires at right angles, a demultiplexer circuit may be laid out using configurable resistors at the crosspoint junctions. This circuit can function as an interface between conventional CMOS microelectronic circuitry and the smaller nanocircuitry by allowing a few CMOS address lines to control a much larger number of nanowires. The voltage margin properties of these resistor-demultiplexers can be improved by basing them on error-correcting codes. In any real fabrication process, the conductances of the resistors in the demultiplexer circuit will be distributed over a range of values. Using simulation, we investigate how variability in the conductances affects the voltages on the output lines of the demultiplexer, and the related voltage margin of the overall circuit. The simulation results provide a simple quantitative relationship revealing that the voltage variability is smaller than the component variability