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Superconducting Electronics

The E2S2C group is actively researching CAD tools and IP for digital superconducting electronics. Superconducting electronics leverages the superconductive nature of niobium to enable near-zero energy consumption for digital electronics cooled to just a few degrees Kelvin. We were part of the IARAP supported ColdFlux team which built a comprehensive CAD flow for digital SFQ circuits in an effort to help this technology scale to larger systems as well as more recently supported DARPA efforts. Our group’s focus has been on CAD tools, ALU architectures, cache memories, and clocking solutions including recent work in clocking RSFQ and AQFP circuits.

List of group members (Ph.D.s): Robert Aviles, Gourav Datta (graduated), Souvik Kundu (graduated), Xi Li (graduated) Ramy Tadros (graduated)

List of publications:

  1. [ICCD 2024] R. Aviles and P. A. Beerel, “A Joint Optimization of Buffer and Splitter Insertion for Phase-Skipping Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron Circuits”, accepted.
  2. [DATE 2024] S. Razmkhah, R. S. Aviles, M. Li, S. Gupta, P. A. Beerel, M. Pedram. “Challenges and Unexplored Frontiers in Electronic Design Automation for Superconducting Digital Logic”.
  3. [ISVLSI 2024] R. Aviles, X. Li, L. Lu, Z. Ni, P. A. Beerel, “An Efficient and Scalable Clocking Assignment Algorithm for Multi-Threaded Multi-Phase Single Flux Quantum Circuits”.
  4. [IEEE TAS 2023] C. Fourier, et al, “Results from the ColdFlux Superconductor Integrated Circuit Design Tool Project”.
  5. [ISVLSI 2022] X. Li, M. Pan, T. Liu, P. A. Beerel, “‘Multi-Phase Clocking for Multi-Threaded Gate-Level-Pipelined Superconductive Logic”.
  6. [ACM TODAES 2021] ,  X. Li* , S. N. Shahsavani*, X. Zhou, M. Pedram, and P. A. Beerel, “A Variation-Aware Hold Time Fixing Methodology for Single Flux Quantum Logic Circuits”.
  7. [IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems-I 2021] G. Datta, Y. Lin, B. Zhang, P.A. Beerel, “Metastability in Superconducting Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) Logic”
  8. [IEEE Trans. on Applied Superconductivity 2020] G. Datta, A.S. Sudheer, P.H. Srinivas, P.A. Beerel. “Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) First-in-First-Out (FIFO) Synchronizers: New Designs and Paradigms”.
  9. [IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2020] G. Datta, P.A. Beerel, “Modeling and Characterization of Metastability in Single Flux Quantum Synchronizers”
  10. [IEEE International Superconductive Electronics Conference 2019] S. Kundu, G.Datta, P.A. Beerel, M. Pedram, “qBSA: Logic Design of a 32-bitBlock-Skewed RSFQ Arithmetic Logic Unit”
  11. [IEEE International Superconductive Electronics Conference 2019] G.Datta, H. Cong, S. Kundu, P. A. Beerel, “qCDC: Metastability-Resilient Synchronization FIFO for SFQ Logic”

Arxiv Preprints:

  1. G. Datta*, S. Lin*, P.A. Beerel, “A High Performance and Robust FIFO Synchronizer-Interface for Crossing Clock Domains in SFQ Logic”, 2021
University of Southern California