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IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity

Investigation of Passive Transmission Lines for the MIT-LL SFQ5ee Process

Ashish Shukla, Benjamin Chonigman, Anubhav Sahu, Dmitri E. Kirichenko, Amol Inamdar, Deepnarayan Gupta

Published Mar 8, 2019• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As the complexity of superconductor circuits grows, we envision a dense network of passive transmission lines (PTLs) being used to interconnect cells in rapid-single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) circuits. In our library approach, each cell has dedicated tracks as place holders for routing PTLs. Higher impedance PTLs are desirable due to their narrower width. However, at higher impedance, the margins for the PTL receiver degrade rapidly. We have designed, fabricated, tested, and simulated passive transmission lines (PTLs) for high-speed interconnects in the MIT-LL SFQ5ee 10 kA/cm2process. For the symmetric dual ground planes case, PTLs are in the M1 layer with M0 and M2 ground planes, or in the M3 layer with M2 and M4 ground planes. For the asymmetrical dual ground planes case, PTLs are in M2 or M3 layers with M1 and M4 ground planes. We report ±30% margins for these PTLs. We investigate the receiver margins for these PTLs and report impact of margins as a function of corners, interlayer transitions, variants of drivers, and receivers. We demonstrate 100 GHz PTL operation in ring oscillator measurements. We have also adopted multi-layer multi-conductor transmission line models for PTL simulation. We observe good model-to-hardware correlation for low- and high-frequency operation.

DOI
10.1109/tasc.2019.2898685

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As the complexity of superconductor circuits grows, we envision a dense network of passive transmission lines (PTLs) being used to interconnect cells in rapid-single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) circuits. In our library approach, each cell has dedicated tracks as place holders for routing PTLs. Higher impedance PTLs are desirable due to their narrower width. However, at higher impedance, the margins for the PTL receiver degrade rapidly. We have designed, fabricated, tested, and simulated passive transmission lines (PTLs) for high-speed interconnects in the MIT-LL SFQ5ee 10 kA/cm2process. For the symmetric dual ground planes case, PTLs are in the M1 layer with M0 and M2 ground planes, or in the M3 layer with M2 and M4 ground planes. For the asymmetrical dual ground planes case, PTLs are in M2 or M3 layers with M1 and M4 ground planes. We report ±30% margins for these PTLs. We investigate the receiver margins for these PTLs and report impact of margins as a function of corners, interlayer transitions, variants of drivers, and receivers. We demonstrate 100 GHz PTL operation in ring oscillator measurements. We have also adopted multi-layer multi-conductor transmission line models for PTL simulation. We observe good model-to-hardware correlation for low- and high-frequency operation.
Passive transmission lines (PTLs) provide an energy-efficient means of transporting pulsed single flux quantum (SFQ) signals between logic gates and blocks on a chip, or even between chips through a multi-chip module carrier. Although functional up to 70 GHz, our previous designs manifested sharp, length-dependent resonances resulting in diminished operating margins. These are particularly inconvenient since the resonant length is about 1 mm at 40–50 GHz, where most SFQ circuits currently function. To avoid the need to keep the PTLs < 1 mm in length, we have optimized the PTL driver-receiver pairs to sufficiently suppress these resonances; this helps facilitate the use of automated routing tools. We present experimental results, in the 10-70 GHz frequency range, for different driver-receiver pairs designed for PTLs in our dual RSFQ-ERSFQ cell library. This cell library, targeting MIT Lincoln Laboratory's SFQ5ee fabrication process, uses PTLs with two types of ground plane configuration. The first variant has signal in M1 and/or M3 with symmetrical ground planes in M0, M2 and/or M2, M4 respectively. The second variant has signal in M2 and/or M3 with asymmetrical ground planes in M1 and M4. We also present a comparison with wider, 4 Ω, PTLs that are more suitable for transport between distant logic blocks. Next, we present experimental results of PTL lengths ranging from 1.2-12 mm over the same 10-70 GHz frequency range. Finally, we report on the design of circuits for investigating crosstalk between two PTLs and their measurement results.
We report simulated results of-rapid single flux quantum (SFQ) circuits having driver, receiver, and passive transmission lines for propagating SFQ pulses to investigate the design criteria. We have studied the equivalent input/output resistance of the driver/receiver in various bias conditions and found that the resistance is almost proportional to the bias current of the driver/receiver. Furthermore, we have proposed inserting a series resistor at the end of the superconducting passive transmission line (PTL) for avoiding undesirable flux trapping in the loop and for isolation in regard to the DC current. We also found that the reduction of the bias margin due to the resistance is rather small when the resistance is much smaller than the impedance of the PTL. An operating margin of more than 30% was obtained in the driver/receiver circuits including the PTL and the series resistor.
The increasing complexity of modern rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) circuits has made on-chip signal routing, an issue of growing importance. In this paper, several methods for routing large-scale RSFQ circuits are described, and a process is presented for determining when to use passive microstrip transmission lines (PTL) and active Josephson transmission lines (JTL). The effect of the size of the JTL inductor and Josephson junctions on the length of a JTL chain for a target delay is also discussed. The dependence of the JTL inductance on the physical layout is evaluated, and the effects of the primary PTL parameters on delay are characterized. A novel PTL driver and receiver configuration is also proposed. Tradeoffs among the number of JJs, inductance, and length of a PTL stripline in the receiver and driver circuits are reported. The energy dissipation is evaluated for two different interconnects. A tradeoff between the proposed PTL circuits and an optimized JTL in terms of energy dissipation and delay is discussed. Guidelines for choosing the optimal element values are determined, and a simulated bias margin of ±29% for the bias current of the proposed receiver operating at 20 GHz in a 10 kA/cm2technology for a 1-mm transmission line is achieved. Summarizing, guidelines and design tradeoffs appropriate for automated layout and synthesis are provided for driving long interconnect in SFQ VLSI circuits.
Along with the improvement of integration and the requirement of high-speed operation, the passive transmission line (PTL) plays a significant role in superconducting integrated circuits due to its intrinsic advantage of extremely low propagation delay and low signal loss in long-distance transmission. Good impedance matching is critical to reduce the signal reflection in the transmission line and maximize the power transferred. Based on the PTL wiring layer selection under SIMIT-Nb03 process, we studied the equivalent input/output impedance for Josephson junction (JJ) at the IO port and explored a method of impedance matching in rapid-single-flux-quantum circuits by adjusting the Stewart McCumber parameterβC{\beta }_{\bm{C}}βC​of the JJ in the design of the PTL's driver and receiver. Furthermore, the accompanying influence from JJ's modifiedβC{\beta }_{\bm{C}}βC​on the performance of the driver and receiver is evaluated to maximize the profit of the functional circuits. The common-used serial resistor is removed to obtain a balanced bias margin for the PTL circuits. The proposed PTL has been designed and tested based on SIMIT-Nb03 fabrication process. In total,$ \pm $30% bias margin for the PTL is achieved at low frequency and high frequency (40 GHz) contrast tests, including operation speed and transmission length as test vector. Additionally, a frequency sweep for 1 mm PTL is performed by the designed ring oscillator on the chip. The maximum working frequency is up to 129 GHz, with a margin duration of 8%.
We developed a design approach for interface circuits to connect Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) cells by using passive transmission lines (PTL's). In the approach, an interface circuit between a PTL and JTL is optimized to obtain a standard interface circuit, and then, modifications are made to previously designed SFQ cells and the standard interface circuit to connect the SFQ cells by using PTL's. The key point is the use of approximately the same interface circuit with every SFQ cell to maintain the matching condition between the interface circuit and the PTL's. Based on this approach, we designed an interface circuit and a test circuit composed of two D-flip-flops connected using 2-mm-long PTL's via the interface circuits. The impedance of the PTL was 2 /spl Omega/. We achieved high-speed operation of the test circuit up to 35 GHz with a bias margin of -15/+30%.
We have studied single-flux-quantum (SFQ) propagation properties in passive transmission lines (PTLs) based on a 10-Nb-layer device structure (ADP2). In ADP2, we can use the PTLs with a line width about 5 mum, one seventh of conventional line width by adopting a strip line (SL) structure and increasing the characteristic impedance. The evaluation has been conducted on the PTL length and the via-hole structure by using ring oscillators. We found that the decrease in the operating region was larger for longer PTL, compared with that in a conventional device structure (STD2). The results would be caused by the increase in the surface resistance. The via-holes connecting the PTLs on different layers have more complicated structure than those of STD2. We have designed the via-hole structure using the electromagnetic wave simulator HFSS. As a result, we have demonstrated sufficiently large operating margins at any data rates up to 80 Gb/s even for the ring oscillator with 30 via-holes.