Circuit Description and Design Flow of Superconducting SFQ Logic Circuits

Kazuyoshi TAKAGI  Nobutaka KITO  Naofumi TAKAGI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E97-C   No.3   pp.149-156
Publication Date: 2014/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
DOI: 10.1587/transele.E97.C.149
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: INVITED PAPER (Special Section on Leading-Edge Technology of Superconductor Large-Scale Integrated Circuits)
Category: 
Keyword: 
single-flux-quantum circuit,  design methodology,  circuit description,  logic design,  layout design,  design verification,  

Full Text: FreePDF

Summary: 
Superconducting Single-Flux-Quantum (SFQ) devices have been paid much attention as alternative devices for digital circuits, because of their high switching speed and low power consumption. For large-scale circuit design, the role of computer-aided design environment is significant. As the characteristics of the SFQ devices are different from conventional devices, a new design environment is required. In this paper, we propose a new timing-aware circuit description method which can be used for SFQ circuit design. Based on the description and the dedicated algorithms we have been developing for SFQ logic circuit design, we propose an integrated design flow for SFQ logic circuits. We have designed a circuit using our developed design tools along with the design flow and demonstrated the correct operation.