Nano state Machines using hysteretic resistors and diode crossbars

A nanoelectronic architecture is proposed that combines configurable, nanoscale diode crossbars with hysteretic resistor crossbars in order to implement general sequential circuits ("nano state machines"). The resulting circuits are inherently nonvolatile, require no static power dissipation, and are tolerant of variation in device characteristics. They are also unusual in that state information is stored using impedance encoding rather than voltage encoding. An example state machine, a two-bit counter, is modeled in SPICE and analyzed.