Analog Memristor Counter Arrays

Counters are widely used for implementing counting, clocking, and computations. The digital counters are usually implemented with flipflops using clocked mechanisms. Counters can consume a large area on chip, as the number of bits per count increases. Counting large numbers requires higher bits or use design methods making use of memories for scalability. Alternatively, in the paper, we present the use of memristor nodes for counting application. Each counter is implemented with a single memristor node and each count is encoded as a memristive conductive state. The conductance of the nodes in the crossbar is incremented or decremented to represent a count value. Also, the proposed method shows the possibility of implementing a larger number of counters in a single crossbar. The proposed counter design is evaluated using Voltage Threshold Adaptive Memristor (VTEAM) model. The on-chip area and power requirements of the proposed circuit is calculated and compared with counter array design using memristor crossbars.