A 57.2GHz 11.2mW 8-bit General Purpose Superconductor Microprocessor with Dual-Clocking Scheme
Ikki Nagaoka, Ryota Kashima, Tomoki Nakano, Masamitsu Tanaka, Taro Yamashita, Koji Inoue, Akira Fujimaki
Abstract
A superconductor single-flux-quantum (SFQ) logic 8-bit microprocessor is demonstrated up to 57.2 GHz with a measured power consumption of 11.2 mW. The microprocessor has an ultradeep, gate-level pipelining containing many feedback paths and communications between components. The arrival clock timings at all the logic gates are ultra-precisely tuned using two different clocking schemes, called “concurrent-flow” and “counter-flow,” to achieve extremely high clock frequency operation over 50 GHz. Low-temperature circumstances enable us to conduct super delay-intensive layout design by controlling delays of all waveguide interconnects in the order of sub-picosecond precision.