Study of the Superconductive Pipelined Multi-Bit ALU

The Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) is a core element of a computer processor that performs arithmetic and logic operations on the operands in computer instruction words. We have developed and tested an RSFQ multi-bit ALU constructed with half adder unit cells. To reduce the complexity of the ALU, We used half adder unit cells. The unit cells were constructed of one half adder and three de switches. The timing problem in the complex circuits has been a very important issue. We have calculated the delay time of all components in the circuit by using Josephson circuit simulation tools of XIC, WRspiceTM , and Julia. To make the circuit work faster, we used a forward clocking scheme. This required a careful design of timing between clock and data pulses in ALU. The designed ALU had limited operation functions of OR, AND, XOR, and ADD. It had a pipeline structure. The fabricated 1-bit, 2-bit, and 4-bit ALU circuits were tested at a few kilo-hertz clock frequency as well as a few tens giga-hertz clock frequency, respectively. For high-speed tests, we used an eye-diagram technique. Our 4-bit ALU operated correctly at up to 5 GHz clock frequency.