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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

ERSFQ 8-Bit Parallel Adders as a Process Benchmark

Alex F. Kirichenko, I. V. Vernik, John A. Vivalda, Rick T. Hunt, Daniel T. Yohannes

Published Nov 20, 2014• 37 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have designed and demonstrated two versions of an ERSFQ 8-bit parallel adder. ERSFQ is a resistor-free approach to dc biasing of Single Flux Quantum circuits that dissipates orders of magnitude less power than a traditional RSFQ logic while operating and has zero dissipation in inactive mode. The adders were designed for and fabricated with various fabrication processes, including HYPRES's 1.0-μm 4-layer 4.5 kA/cm2process, HYPRES's 0.25-μm 4-layer 4.5 kA/cm2process, HYPRES's 0.25-μm 6-layer 4.5 kA/cm2planarized process, and MIT Lincoln Lab's 0.25-μm 4-layer 10 kA/cm2process. These circuits serve as a good LSI fabrication process benchmark. We describe design and report on test results of all versions of the adder.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2014.2371875

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We have designed and demonstrated two versions of an ERSFQ 8-bit parallel adder. ERSFQ is a resistor-free approach to dc biasing of Single Flux Quantum circuits that dissipates orders of magnitude less power than a traditional RSFQ logic while operating and has zero dissipation in inactive mode. The adders were designed for and fabricated with various fabrication processes, including HYPRES's 1.0-μm 4-layer 4.5 kA/cm2process, HYPRES's 0.25-μm 4-layer 4.5 kA/cm2process, HYPRES's 0.25-μm 6-layer 4.5 kA/cm2planarized process, and MIT Lincoln Lab's 0.25-μm 4-layer 10 kA/cm2process. These circuits serve as a good LSI fabrication process benchmark. We describe design and report on test results of all versions of the adder.
We designed and tested low-power digital gates based on the energy-efficient rapid single flux quantum (ERSFQ) and on the reversible nSQUID logic. The ERSFQ circuit consists of a series of 13 toggle flip-flops (TFFs), where the bias resistors are replaced by inductors which generate no energy dissipation in the static mode, resulting in a power consumption orders of magnitude below that of traditional RSFQ circuits during operation. The ERSFQ circuits were fabricated with HYPRES' standard 4.5-kA/cm2process and tested up to 20 GHz. The RF input level was about -25 dBm 50 Ω matched, and the output level was 400 μVpp. The nSQUID ring with “NOT” gates was fabricated with HYPRES' standard 1-kA/cm2process. The “0” and “1” input logic signals were realized injecting ±5 mA of current in a superconductive coil, obtaining 6 μVpp of amplitude as output signal. The test was performed at low frequency in order to verify the functionality and the ultralow power consumption.
We designed, fabricated, and demonstrated an energy-efficient ERSFQ 4-bit decoder. The first version of the decoder is designed and fabricated using HYPRES legacy 1.0-μm four-layer 4.5-kA/cm2process. It occupies an area of 700 μm × 1800 μm, which is to be reduced to 160 μm × 400 μm once fabricated using HYPRES's RIPPLE-2 0.25-μm six-layer process. The decoder features ±13% dc bias current operating margins and below 70-aJ energy consumption per one address select operation. We report test results of the decoder and discuss its future implementation in cryogenic random access memory devices, including magnetic memory devices.
We present a novel, resistor-free approach to dc biasing of RSFQ circuits, known as Energy-efficient RSFQ (ERSFQ). This biasing scheme does not dissipate energy in the static (non-active) mode, and dissipates orders of magnitude less power than traditional RSFQ while operating. Using this approach, we have designed, fabricated and successfully tested at low and high speed a D flip-flop with complementary outputs and several static frequency dividers. We present the method, demonstrate experimental results, and discuss future implementations of ERSFQ.
We have designed and tested a parallel 8-bit ERSFQ binary shifter that is one of the essential circuits in the design of the energy-efficient superconducting CPU. The binary shifter performs a bidirectional SHIFT instruction of an 8-bit argument. It consists of a bidirectional triple-port shift register controlled by two (left and right) shift pulse generators asynchronously generating a set number of shift pulses. At first clock cycle, an 8-bit word is loaded into the binary shifter and a 3-bit shift argument is loaded into the desired shift-pulse generator. Next, the generator produces the required number of shift SFQ pulses (from 0 to 7) asynchronously, with a repetition rate set by the internal generator delay of ~ 30 ps. These SFQ pulses are applied to the left (positive) or the right (negative) input of the binary shifter. Finally, after the shift operation is completed, the resulting 8-bit word goes to the parallel output. The complete 8-bit ERSFQ binary shifter, consisting of 820 Josephson junctions, was simulated and optimized using PSCAN2. It was fabricated in MIT Lincoln Lab's 10-kA/cm2SFQ5ee fabrication process with a high-kinetic inductance layer. We have successfully tested the binary shifter at both the LSB-to-MSB and MSB-to-LSB propagation regimes for all eight shift arguments. A single shift operation on a single input word demonstrated operational margins of ±16% of the dc bias current. The correct functionality of the 8-bit ERSFQ binary shifter with the large, exhaustive data pattern was observed within ±10% margins of the dc bias current. In this paper, we describe the design and present the test results for the ERSFQ 8-bit parallel binary shifter.
We present the design and results of experimental verification methods for ultra-low-power digital circuits based on the recently introduced energy-efficient single flux quantum (eSFQ) logic. Similar to another low-power SFQ logic, ERSFQ, eSFQ circuits make use of superconducting dc bias current dividers and thus avoid static power dissipation. As a result, per-gate power dissipation is reduced by two orders of magnitude as compared to conventional rapid single flux quantum and static power dissipation is zero. The eSFQ circuits are fabricated using the HYPRES standard 4.5 kA/cm2process. We integrate a low-pass analog-to-digital modulator with our eSFQ deserializer to enable testing at high speed. In this paper, we demonstrate the viability and performance metrics of eSFQ circuits through functional and high-speed tests. Specifically, we confirmed correct operation and present measured parameter margins.
Energy efficiency has become the primary parameter for the design of next-generation single flux quantum (SFQ) circuits. This, however, needs to be balanced with optimization for clock speed and bias margins. Here, we experimentally study the tradeoff between circuit activity, energy efficiency, and bias margins for zero static power dissipation ERSFQ circuits. For ERSFQ, dc power is provided by a Josephson transmission line (JTL) called a “feeding” JTL (FJTL), which acts as a voltage source. As a test case, shift registers and multiplexers were laid out and fabricated in both HYPRES's and MIT-LL's 10-kA/cm2fabrication processes and tested at low (~kHz) and high (~GHz) clock frequencies. The functional bias margins for these circuits increase significantly from +/-4% to over +/-19% when the Josephson junction count in the FJTL was increased to ~30% of total dc bias current of the circuit. Based on our findings, we discuss how to optimize ERSFQ circuits for both energy efficiency and dc bias margins.