The NanoBox project: exploring fabrics of self-correcting logic blocks for high defect rate molecular device technologies

Trends indicate that emerging process technologies, including molecular computing, experiences an increase in the number of noise induced errors and device defects. In this paper, we introduce the NanoBox, a logic lookup table bit string. In this way, we contain and self-correct errors within the lookup table, thereby presenting a robust logic block to higher levels of logic design. We explore five different NanoBox coding techniques. We also examine the cost of implementing two different circuit blocks using a homogeneous fabric of NanoBox logic elements: 1) a floating point control unit from the IBM Power4 microprocessor and 2) a four-instruction ALU. In this initial investigation, our results are not meant to draw definitive conclusions about any specific NanoBox implementation, but rather to spur discussion and explore the feasibility of fine-grained error correction techniques in molecular computing systems.