• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.257-271
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• 2010

As the end of photolithographic integration era is approaching fast, numerous nanoscale devices and systems based on novel nanoscale materials and assembly techniques are recently emerging. Notably, various reconfigurable architectures with considerable promise have been proposed based on nanowire crossbar structure as the primitive building block. Unfortunately, high-density sys-tems consisting of nanometer-scale elements are likely to have numerous physical imperfections and variations. Therefore, defect-tolerance is considered as one of the most exigent challenges in nanowire crossbar systems. In this work, three different defect-avoidant logic mapping algorithms to circumvent defective crosspoints in nanowire reconfigurable crossbar systems are evaluated in terms of various performance metrics. Then, a novel method to find the most cost-effective repair solution is demonstrated by considering all major repair parameters and quantitatively estimating the performance and cost-effectiveness of each algorithm. Extensive parametric simulation results are reported to compare overall repair costs of the repair algorithms under consideration and to validate the cost-driven repair optimization technique.