A method for constructing and addressing a nanoscale memory with known addresses and for tolerating defects which may arise during manufacture or device operational lifetime. During construction, nanoscale wires with addresses are stochastically assembled. During a programming phase, nanoscale wires are stochastically selected using their stochastic addresses through microscale inputs and a desired address code is associated with the selected nanoscale wires. Memory addresses are associated to the codes and then selected using the known codes during read/write operations from/to the memory.