We demonstrated the experimental operation of a single flux quantum (SFQ) pulse arbitration circuit for rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) digital applications. The circuit arbitrates two asynchronous incoming signals with the internal clock signal, and produces two signals with a time difference. The circuit consists of two data latches and a clock generator based on a ring oscillator. We fabricated the circuit using NEC's 2-/spl mu/m standard fabrication technology, and tested it in two ways. Firstly we tested throughput characteristics. From measurements of the average voltage of output Josephson Junctions, we confirmed that the throughput was indeed controlled by the clock signal up to around 60-GHz. Secondly we tested the arbitration function. The test used a new testing circuit connected with output side of the arbitration circuit. This circuit consists of a confluence buffer, a splitter and three SFQ/DCs, and was capable of monitoring output signals and their arrival time difference. We changed the difference in arrival times of the input signals to the arbiter circuit, and observed two output signals with the test circuit. The observed signals show that they always sent out with time difference, and we thus confirmed the correct operation of the circuit even for pairs of input signals with the same arrival time.
We demonstrated the experimental operation of a single flux quantum (SFQ) pulse arbitration circuit for rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) digital applications. The circuit arbitrates two asynchronous incoming signals with the internal clock signal, and produces two signals with a time difference. The circuit consists of two data latches and a clock generator based on a ring oscillator. We fabricated the circuit using NEC's 2-/spl mu/m standard fabrication technology, and tested it in two ways. Firstly we tested throughput characteristics. From measurements of the average voltage of output Josephson Junctions, we confirmed that the throughput was indeed controlled by the clock signal up to around 60-GHz. Secondly we tested the arbitration function. The test used a new testing circuit connected with output side of the arbitration circuit. This circuit consists of a confluence buffer, a splitter and three SFQ/DCs, and was capable of monitoring output signals and their arrival time difference. We changed the difference in arrival times of the input signals to the arbiter circuit, and observed two output signals with the test circuit. The observed signals show that they always sent out with time difference, and we thus confirmed the correct operation of the circuit even for pairs of input signals with the same arrival time.
We evaluate the performance of a single flux quantum (SFQ) circuit and discuss its possible system-level application. First, we describe an optical-electrical-SFQ hybrid router system that is divided into three functions: an SFQ packet-routing function, a control function, and an optical transmission function. For the packet-switching core, we have developed a packet-switching architecture based on an internal speedup time-shifted Batcher Banyan approach. Our simulated results show that this architecture should provide good scalability and a low packet-loss rate. Additionally, we have fabricated an asynchronous pulse arbitration circuit. This circuit is a key component in our packet-switching system. The circuit synchronizes two asynchronous incoming signals without any global clock signals. It consists of a clock generator based on a ring oscillator and data latches. By measuring the average output voltage of the Josephson junction, we confirmed the output signal control by the clock at over 60 Gbps throughput.
Superconductive Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) logic and memory, in which ones and zeros are represented by the presence or absence within a timing window of quantized picosecond voltage pulse (/spl int/v(t)dt=h/2e=2.07 mV/spl middot/ps), corresponding to one SFQ, can be integrated into a digital computing system with an operating rate of several tens of GHz, based on the present Nb Josephson junction integrated circuit technology. It is the most promising technology beyond semiconductor transistors for low-power high-end computation. However, as the operating speed of circuits and systems increase, timing uncertainty from fabrication process variations makes global synchronization very hard. In this paper, we present a globally asynchronous, locally synchronous timing methodology for RSFQ digital design, which can solve the global synchronization problem. We also demonstrate the recent experimental results of some asynchronous circuits and systems implemented in RSFQ technology. Several key components such as a self-timed shift register, a self-timed demultiplexor, a Muller-C element, a completion detector, and a clock generator have been designed and tested. High speed operation has been confirmed up to 20 Gb/s for a prototype data buffer system, which consists two self-timed shift registers and an on-chip 5-38 GHz clock generator.
Some basic cells in the rapid single-flux quantum (RSFQ) family of superconductive logic circuits were studied. An input stage, a buffer, and an OR gate were simulated and laid out for a standard niobium-based fabrication process. The resulting circuits perform properly for clock speeds up to 1 GHz. For the simpler circuits tested, the measured margins are wide, consistent with simulations, and not very dependent on clock speed. However, margin decreases with increased circuit complexity. The input stage converts a rising edge into an SFQ pulse, which has a small amplitude and narrow width in time. On the present circuits, these pulses are about 200 mu V in amplitude and 10 ps in width. To facilitate measurement, the authors have chosen as the output an asymmetrical superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) consisting of two Josephson junctions. It converts SFQ pulses into 2.5 mV latching output levels on chip. By inductively coupling SFQ pulses into the SQUID loop, DC current isolation between the RSFQ circuit-under-test and the output stage is provided. The SQUID was optimized for 2 GHz operations.>
A clock recovery circuit has been successfully tested at frequencies up to 20 GHz. This cell is designed for a rapid-single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) telecommunication data switch. It serves to set the receiver clock in phase with the incoming digital signal. The circuit consists of a dc-to-SFQ converter, ring oscillator [(RO) is a closed-loop RSFQ Josephson transmission line], confluence buffer, and an 8-bit binary counter. The input signal transforms to SFQ pulses, and each pulse resets the phase of the ring oscillator, giving a locking time of 1 bit. Thus, the pull-in (capture) range and hold-in (tracking) range are the same, and strictly depend on the encoding of the input signal. This range is estimated to be about 1 GHz at frequency 20 GHz, if the sequence of consecutive ONEs or ZEROs does not exceed 20 bits. The quality factor QRO of ring oscillator is about 2000, which gives a jitter of 50 fs for a 35-junction RO. A sampling technique was used to demonstrate phase recovery (phase locking) with only one incoming pulse per 512 clock periods.
We have been developing a single-flux-quantum (SFQ) cross-bar switch, which is a main component of a network packet switch. We think that a network switch is an application in which the high speed of SFQ technology would be advantageous. Anticipating general and large-scale SFQ logic circuit design, we used the cell-based design method and the CONNECT standard SFQ cell library. The two-input and two-output cross-bar switch, a core switch component, consists of 13 logic cells connected by Josephson-transmission-line (JTL) cells. Because of the large size of JTL cells and the large delay in them, timing adjustment becomes more difficult as the operating speed and circuit size increase. After using a commercially available automatic router to find appropriate routes efficiently, we used a static timing analyzer for fine timing adjustment. Timing violations were fixed by changing JTL path delays using the tools we developed. The target operating frequency of the switch was 40 GHz, which corresponds to a clock period of 25 ps. Careful timing adjustment was necessary to ensure correct operations at such a high speed. The test chip was fabricated by using an NEC standard Nb process. The circuit, including on-chip test circuitry, was composed of about 1500 Josephson junctions. We confirmed its correct operations up to 50 GHz with a bias margin of /spl plusmn/20%.
A single-flux-quantum (SFQ) device provides fast operation with low power consumption. As SFQ devices can be applied in network switches requiring high throughput, we have been developing an SFQ network switch system. Not only the switch fabric but also the switch scheduler is a key component for a high-throughput network switch. The switch scheduler orders multiple inputs to a single output at the same time to prevent collisions from occurring in the switch fabric. The scheduling time becomes longer as the number of switch ports increases, because the scheduler must scan requests from all input ports. We designed two types of 4-port arbiters (i.e. switch scheduler sub-circuits) with structures based on serial or parallel processing. We chose to implement and demonstrate the serial arbiter because it has a smaller number of gates. It consisted of about 1800 Josephson junctions, including on-chip test circuitry. We tested a fabricated circuit at high speed and confirmed its correct operation at 40 GHz.