Demonstration of an Energy-Efficient, Gate-Level-Pipelined 100 TOPS/W Arithmetic Logic Unit Based on Low-Voltage Rapid Single-Flux-Quantum Logic

Abstract

We report the successful operation of an energy-efficient 8-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) based on bit-parallel, gate-Ievel-pipelining, and low-voltage rapid single-flux-quantum (LV-RSFQ) approaches. We implemented the ALU using a 10-kA/cm2 Nb process. The bias voltage was optimized to obtain high energy efficiency. Although lowed bias voltage leads to difficulty in timing design, we solved the problem by precise timing control. The operating frequency reached 30 GHz. Thanks to these high-throughput and low-energy technologies, we realized highly energy-efficient operation over 100 tera-operations per second per watt (TOPS/W).