Design of a pipelined 8-bit-serial single-flux-quantum microprocessor with multiple ALUs
Masamitsu Tanaka, Tadashi Kawamoto, Yuki Yamanashi +7 more
We have designed a pipelined 8-bit-serial single-flux-quantum microprocessor with multiple ALUs, called CORE1 β. In the CORE1 β, two ALUs connected in cascade enable us to perform two calculations on serial data using a register-to-register instruction, to enhance the peak performance. In addition, we have introduced pipelining to boost the performance. Although the pipelining is a difficult technique that requires a complex design in the datapath, we have implemented a simplified pipeline with seven stages by using two techniques. One is the separation of clock signals for pipelining and bit processing, and the other is the introduction of new buffers driven by independent clock signals for reading and writing flexibly in order to ease the difficulty in timing design between the register file and the ALUs. According to the logic simulation, the peak performance of the designed microprocessor is estimated to be 1500 million operations per second with a power consumption of 3.3 mW. We have fabricated the CORE1 β chip by using the NEC 2.5 kA cm −2 niobium standard process, and confirmed the correct operations of several instructions using high-speed clocks.
Superconductor Science and Technology•Mar 16, 2006•35 citations