Programmable Nanocircuits Advance

Things are heating up in the nanoscale programmable logic circuit “circuit”… A paper submitted to Nature last August has been published this month detailing further advances into the “transputer” programmable logic grail, this time fabricated utilizing ge/si based FET nanowires. The researchers were able to reprogram a so constructed logic tile and implement multiplexer, demultiplexer, full subtractor, and clocked Dlatch functions:

“Recently, logic circuits also have been demonstrated that use two or three elements of a one-dimensional memristor array, although such passive devices without gain are difficult to cascade. These circuits fall short of the requirements for a scalable, multifunctional nanoprocessor, owing to challenges in materials, assembly and architecture on the nanoscale.” [Nature Citation (subscription req)]