What behavior makes a counter a special case of a finite sta
     What behavior makes a counter a special case of a finite state machine?  The state encoding for a counter can be selected to minimize the next state logic.  A counter only has one state that repeats over and over while the output is incremented or decremented.  A counter requires one state for each bit within the counter output vector.  A counter traverses through its states in a linear manner and each state represents a unique output value. 
  
  Solution
A counter traverses through its states in a linear manner and each state represents a unique output value.

