Novel quantum‐dot cellular automata implementation of flip‐flop and phase‐frequency detector based on nand‐nor‐inverter gates

CMOS technology faces fundamental challenges such as frequency and power consumption due to the impossibility of further reducing dimensions. For these reasons, researchers have been thinking replacement of this technology with other technologies such as quantum‐dot cellular automata (QCA) technology. Many studies have been done to design digital circuits using QCA technology. Phase‐frequency detector (PFD) is one of the main blocks in electrical and communication circuits. In this paper, a novel structure for PFDs in QCA technology is proposed. In the proposed design, the novel D flip‐flop (D‐FF) with reset ability is used. The D‐FF is designed by the proposed D latch which is based on nand‐nor‐inverter (NNI) and an inverter gate. This proposed D latch has 22 cells and 0.5 clock cycle latency and 0.018‐μm² area. The inverter gate of the D‐FF has output signal with high polarization level and lower area than previous inverters, and the NNI gate of the D‐FF is a universal gate. The proposed PFD has 141 cells, 0.17‐μm² occupied area, and two clock cycle latency that is smaller compared with PFD and is based on common inverter and majority gates.     

Modular design of QCA carry flow adders and multiplier with reduced wire crossing and number of logic gates

Quantum‐dot cellular automata (QCA) is an emerging technology with the rapid development of low‐power high‐performance digital circuits. In order to reduce the wire crossings and the number of logic gates in QCA circuits, this paper proposes a full adder named Tile full adder based on a 3 × 3 grid module, a Tile bit‐serial adder based on the new full adder and a Diverse Clock Tile bit serial adder (DC Tile bit‐serial) adder based on the new full adder and a DC multiplier network. Based on previously mentioned circuit units an improved carry flow adder (CFA) named Tile CFA and two types of carry delay multiplier (CDM) named Tile CDM and DC Tile CDM (DC Tile CDM) with different sizes are presented. All of the proposed QCA circuits are designed and simulated with QCADesigner. Simulation results show that these circuit designs not only implement the logic functions correctly but also achieve a significant performance improvement. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust QCA full-adders using an efficient fault-tolerant five-input majority gate

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is considered as a top candidate for nanoscale technologies with unique features such as very low occupancy and ultralow power consumption. Despite the potential benefits of QCA technology over CMOS technology, QCA circuits are highly prone to defects. Therefore, a demand has risen in designing fault-tolerant circuits. In this research, a novel fault-tolerant five-input majority gate is first suggested, and then it is evaluated by implementing a variety of faults such as cell omission, cell displacement, and extra-cell deposition. The evaluation results reveal that the proposed structure is 100%, 51.85%, and 18.8% fault-tolerant under extra-cell deposition, single-cell omission, and double-cell omission, respectively. Moreover, two single-layer and coplanar fault-tolerant QCA full-adders are offered using the suggested fault-tolerant structure. The stability of the presented single-layer full-adder has also been investigated under single and double cell omission defects. The evaluation outcomes show that the suggested fault-tolerant single-layer full-adder has a high stability in Sum and C_out outputs compared with other full-adders. In order to validate the functionality of the suggested fault-tolerant five-input majority gate, a number of physical investigations are given. The QCADesigner 2.0.3 software has been used to evaluate the simulation results.     

QCA技术在递归盒式滤波器中的应用

量子点元胞自动机(quantum dot-cellular automata, QCA)因其延迟时间短、功耗低以及占用面积小等优点被当作代替CMOS的新型技术之一。针对CMOS器件尺寸日益减小导致的高功耗和电容寄生及串扰问题,本文首次利用QCA技术构建了一种递归盒式滤波器。其中,提出了一种全新的QCA全加器,较已提出的QCA全加器减少了55%的电路面积;少使用了56.7%的元胞数;量子成本也降低了10%以上。并以此为基础设计了一种高效的行波进位加法器(ripple carry adder, RCA)以及一种高效的进位选择加法器(carry select adder, CSA)来构成盒式滤波器的加法单元。以此构建的盒式滤波器较一般QCA盒式滤波器节省了32.6%的硬件资源;减少20%的电路运行时间;减少了48.7%的功耗。并使用QCA Designer仿真,结果表明,本设计完全可以代替实现传统的盒式滤波器功能,并在效率、功耗、电路面积、资源占用方面均有显著降低。     

Innovative design methodologies in quantum‐dot cellular automata

Current transistor‐based IC fabrication technology faces many trivial issues such as those of excess power dissipation, expensive fabrication and short channel effects at very low device size [1]. Quantum‐dot cellular automata (QCA)‐based digital electronics on the other hand provide scope for further development in the future by shrinking the device size. Current QCA logic circuits are based on logic synthesis using Inverters and (three or five input) Majority Gates. In this paper, a new design methodology has been described that can be used to create circuits with even greater device substrate densities than what are currently achieved in existing QCA designs. Based on the proposed methodology, a new QCA inverter is proposed. It is further tested through simulations on QCA Designer. Through the simulations, it is subsequently proved to be much more reliable and robust than the presently used common QCA inverter(s). In the second section of this paper, simple QCA circuits such as ring oscillators using odd number of inverters in daisy chains are described and designed using the proposed inverter design. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel robust exclusive-OR function implementation in QCA nanotechnology with energy dissipation analysis

Numerous scientific and fundamental hindrances have resulted in a slow down of silicon technology and opened new possibilities for emerging research devices and structures. The need has arisen to expedite new methods to interface these nanostructures for computing applications. Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is one of such computing paradigm and means of encoding binary information. QCA computing offers potential advantages of ultra-low power dissipation, improved speed and highly density structures. This paper presents a novel two-input Exclusive-OR (XOR) gate implementation in quantum-dot cellular automata nanotechnology with minimum area and power dissipation as compared to previous designs. The proposed novel QCA based XOR structure uses only 28 QCA cells with an area of \(0.02\,\upmu \hbox {m}^{2}\) and latency of 0.75 clock cycles. Also the proposed novel XOR gate is implemented in single layer without using any coplanar and multi-layer cross-over wiring facilitating highly robust and dense QCA circuit implementations. To investigate the efficacy of our proposed design in complex array of QCA structures, 4, 8, 16 and 32-bit even parity generator circuits were implemented. The proposed 4-bit even parity design occupies 9 and 50 % less area and has 12.5 and 22.22 % less latency as compared to previous designs. The 32-bit even parity design occupies 22 % less area than the best reported previous design. The proposed novel XOR structure has 28 % less switching energy dissipation, 10 % less average leakage energy dissipation and 19 % less average energy dissipation than best reported design. The simulation results verified that the proposed design offers significant improvements in terms of area, latency, energy dissipation and structural implementation requirements. All designs have been functionally verified in the QCADesigner tool for GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure based semiconductor implementations. The energy dissipation results have been computed using an accurate QCAPro tool.     

Monte-Carlo Simulation of Clocked and Non-Clocked QCA Architectures

We present a Monte Carlo simulation of two implementations of Quantum Cellular Automaton (QCA) circuits: one based on simple ground state relaxation and the other on the clocked cell scheme that has recently been proposed by Tóth and Lent. We focus on the time-dependent behavior of two basic circuits, a binary wire and a majority voting gate, and assess their maximum operating speed and temperature requirements for different sets of fabrication parameters.     

New approaches for modeling and simulation of quantum-dot cellular automata

In order to further development of the microelectronic systems and to achieve the circuits with higher speed, higher density and lower power consumption, new technologies to replace the conventional CMOS technology must be introduced. Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is an emerging nanotechnology that provides a new method for computation at the nanoscale regime. In this paper, two methods e.g. artificial neural network and a mathematical algorithm based on the QCA cell–cell response function named Tansig method are used for the modeling and simulation of QCA circuits at the cell level. The accuracy and performance of the proposed methods are analyzed through few circuits. The results of these two approaches are compared with each other and QCADesigner software. The results show the feasibility and acceptable accuracy of these types of simulations. Also, these methods enable the simulation of large QCA circuits at the cell level with acceptable precision in a short time with the ability to implement in other circuit simulators such as HSPICE and so on.     

ONOFIC-based leakage reduction technique for FinFET domino circuits

A new technique ON/OFf logIC (ONOFIC) is proposed in this paper for designing domino logic circuits in fin-field effect transistor (FinFET) deep submicron technology. In this technique, a block named ONOFIC is inserted between pull-up network (PUN) and pull-down network (PDN) of domino circuits. The proposed technique is simulated in FinFET short gate (SG) and low power (LP) mode. The subthreshold current which plays a major role to determinate leakage power is very low in this technique. Two-, 4-, 8-, and 16-input OR gates are simulated with 32-nm node FinFET technology. In FinFET LP mode, the subthreshold leakage power of the proposed technique is reduced by 15% to 24.3% at 25°C and reduced by 8.71% to 23.4% at 110°C compared with standard domino circuits. The subthreshold leakage power of the proposed circuit is reduced by 19.2% to 57.3% at 25°C and reduced by 17.6% to 60.7% at 110°C compared with leakage control transistor (LECTOR)-based circuits. In FinFET SG mode, the subthreshold leakage power of the proposed technique is reduced by 7.69% to 17.7% at 25°C and reduced by 0 to 7.85% at 110°C compared with standard domino circuits. The subthreshold leakage power of the proposed circuit is reduced by 60.4% to 73.9% at 25°C and reduced by 45.1% to 65.5% at 110°C compared with LECTOR-based circuits. The proposed technique is also efficient to reduce subthreshold leakage power in deep nanometer technology nodes from 7 to 20 nm.     

Design of novel efficient adder and subtractor for quantum‐dot cellular automata

Quantum‐dot cellular automata (QCA) is one of the new emerging technologies being investigated as an alternative to complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology. This paper proposes optimized one‐bit full adder (FA) for implementation in QCA. The fault effects at the proposed FA outputs due to the missing cell defects are analyzed, and the test vectors for detection of all faults are identified. Also, the efficient designs of one‐bit full subtractor (FS), one‐bit FA/FS and four‐bit carry flow adder (CFA) are presented using the proposed FA. These structures are designed and simulated using QCADesigner software. The proposed designs are compared with other previous works. In comparison with the best previous design, the proposed FA has 25% and 26% improvement in cells count and area, respectively, and it is faster. For the proposed FS, FA/FS and CFA, the obtained results confirm that these designs are more efficient in terms of area, cell count and delay. Therefore, the implementation of these designs may lead to the efficient use of the calculative unit in various applications, which may be used as a basic building block of a general purpose nanoprocessor. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The design,analysis, and cost estimation of a generic adder and subtractor using the layered T (LT) logic reduction methodology with a quantum-dot cellular-automata-based approach

The quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is considered to be one of the ground-breaking nanotechnologies developed over the last two decades. A layered T (LT) logic cell library is constructed herein, and the methodology is extended to generic adder and subtractor module designs. The two proposed algorithms lead to more efficient QCA layout designs for an n-bit ripple carry adder (RCA) and subtractor based on an effective clock zone assignment approach. The suggested one-, four-, and eight-bit RCAs and subtractors surpass most of their existing counterparts by offering lower effective area and cell complexity. A comparative analysis is presented regarding the complexity, irreversible power dissipation, and Cost_α of the proposed n-bit layouts from a cost estimation purview.

     

FDSTDL: Low-power technique for FinFET domino circuits

Major issues in designing low-power high-speed VLSI circuits are propagation delay, power consumption, and noise tolerance. This paper describes fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) technology for the design of low-power VLSI circuits. FinFET uses two gates (front and back) in place of a single gate as in complementary metal-oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology for better control of the channel. A new technique foot driven stack transistor domino logic (FDSTDL) is proposed for designing domino logic circuits in order to reduce leakage power and propagation delay. In this paper, 2-, 4-, 8-, and 16-input domino OR gates are designed and simulated using existing and proposed techniques in CMOS and FinFET technology. Simulation is done on the 32 nm predictive technology model (PTM) node using HSPICE on a direct current (DC) supply voltage of 0.9 V. The proposed circuit is simulated in two modes of FinFET, short gate (SG) mode, and low power (LP) mode. The proposed technique shows maximum power reduction of 43.45% in SG mode in comparison with conditional stacked keeper domino logic (CSK-DL) technique and maximum delay reduction of 38.66% in LP mode in comparison with coarse-mesh finite difference (CMFD) technique at a frequency of 200 MHz.     

Design of a reversible structure for memory in quantum-dot cellular automata

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology has limitations in reducing the area and size of circuits. The disadvantages of this technology include high power consumption and temperature problems. Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a new technology that can overcome these shortcomings. Reversible logic is technology used to reduce the power loss in QCA. QCA can be used to design memories that require high operating speed. In this paper, we propose a structure for the reversible memory in QCA. The proposed structure utilizes three-layer technology, which has a significant impact on circuit size reduction. The proposed structure for the reversible memory has 63% improvement in cell number, a 75% improvement in area occupancy, and a 60% reduction in delay compared to the previous best structure.     

A novel QCA implementation of MUX-based universal shift register

QCA (Quantum-dot Cellular Automata) is an alternative technology for CMOS that has a low power consumption and high density. QCA extensively supports the new plans in the field of nanotechnology. Applications of QCA technology as an alternative method for CMOS technology in nano-scale have a hopeful future. This paper presents the successful design, implementation and simulation of 2 to 1, 4 to 1 and 8 to 1 multiplexer with the minimum area as compared to the previous models in QCA technology. In this paper, by means of 4 to 1 multiplexers including D-Flip Flop (D-FF) structure in QCA, we present an 8-bit universal shift register. The structure of the 8-bit universal register is extendable to 16-bit, 32-bit and etc. In this paper, the successful simulation of 2 to 1, 4 to 1 and 8 to 1 multiplexers, including D-FF and finally 8-bit universal register structure in QCADesigner is provided. The multiplexers and D-FF presented in this paper have the minimum complexity, area and delay compared to the previous models. In this paper, the implementation of 8-bit universal shift register, by means of 4 to 1 multiplexers and D-FF are presented in QCA technique which have the minimum complexity and delay. In the proposed design of the 8-bit universal shift register, the faults are likely to occur at 2 to 1 multiplexers and D-FF. In this article, 2 to 1 multiplexers and D-FF are investigated from the cell missing and possible defects. Considering the pipeline being the virtue of QCA, the 8-bit universal shift register has a high speed function. This 8-bit universal shift register may be used in the high speed processors as well as cryptography circuits.     

A reversible ALU using HNG and Ferdkin gates in QCA nanotechnology

Quantum dot cellular automata (QCA) with the characteristics such as low energy dissipation and high density is a suitable alternative technology to CMOS technology. Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is one of the most important critical components of a microprocessor, and it is the core component of central processing unit (CPU). In this work, a novel reversible ALU in QCA nanotechnology is proposed. The reversible ALU contains three Ferdkin gates and one HNG gate. The proposed structure needs one constant input and generates only one garbage output. The proposed circuit does not need any rotated cells and only uses one layer that improves the manufacturability of the design interestingly. This circuit can perform 20 operations such as AND, OR, XOR, XNOR, COPY, addition, and increment. Our design contains only 480 cells and 12 majority voters and requires 15 clock phases. The proposed structures are simulated using QCADesigner version 2.0.3. The reversible ALU, despite a 25% increase in operations, has a 28% improvement in cell numbers and a 6% improvement in delay.     

A low leakage TG-CNTFET–based inexact full adder for low power image processing applications

This paper presents a highly stable, low leakage inexact full adder (FA) which is based on top gate carbon nanotube field effect transistors (TG-CNTFET) for motion detector applications. Inexact arithmetic circuits are highly accepted in low power multimedia applications. Circuit level metrics, ie, average power, propagation delay, power-delay product (PDP), and leakage power dissipation as well as application level metric such as peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) are considered to compare the performance of proposed inexact FA. All the simulations are performed using HSPICE tool with Stanford 32-nm TG-CNTFET model. The operating frequency used for simulation is 1-Ghz with 0.9-V supply voltage. Proposed inexact FA successfully achieve manifold reduction in leakage power as well as consume 89.2% lesser energy as compared with latest existing inexact FA while having other parameters in acceptable range. Simulations using MATLAB show satisfactory image quality and PSNR value for motion detection applications. The effect of variations in voltage and temperature on leakage power is also presented which confirms stability of the proposed circuit.     

A 1-bit full adder using CNFET based dual chirality high speed domino logic

CNFET devices are preferred over CMOS devices for designing high-speed digital circuits. This paper introduces a new technique Dual Chirality High-speed Domino Logic (DCHSDL) for implementing low power and high-speed domino circuits in CNFET technology. Simulations are carried out for 32 nm Stanford CNFET model in HSPICE for 2, 4, 8 and 16 input domino OR gates at a clock frequency of 200 MHz on a DC supply voltage of 0.9 V. The proposed domino technique shows maximum power reduction of 82.55% and maximum delay reduction of 57.97% compared to CPVT technique in CNFET technology at a frequency of 200 MHz. The proposed circuit shows maximum power reduction of 97.90% compared to its analogous circuit in CMOS technology for a 2-input domino OR gate. The proposed technique shows maximum improvement of 1.05× to 1.63× in unity noise gain (UNG) compared to various existing techniques in CNFET technology at a frequency of 200 MHz. The 1-bit Full Adder designed using the proposed technique shows a power reduction of 16.91% and a delay reduction of 23.64% compared to standard FDL 1-bit Full Adder.     

Differential pass transistor pulsed latch

This paper describes the Differential Pass Transistor Pulsed Latch (DPTPL) which enhances D-Q delay and reduces power consumption using NMOS pass transistors and feedback PMOS transistors. The proposed flip-flop uses the characteristic of stronger drivability of NMOS transistor than that of transmission gate if the sum of total transistor width is the same. Positive feedback PMOS transistors enhance the speed of the latch as well as guarantee the full swing of internal nodes. Also, the power consumption of the proposed pulsed latch is reduced significantly due to the reduced clock load and smaller total transistor width compared to conventional differential flip-flops. DPTPL reduces E × D by 45.5% over ep-SFF. The simulations were performed in a 0.13 um CMOS technology at 1.2 V supply voltage with 1.25 GHz clock frequency.     

Power·delay product in COSMOS logic circuits

In this simulation work, we use COSMOS logic devices—a novel single gate CMOS architecture recently announced [1]—in multi-input logic gates, assessing its performance in terms of power·delay product. We consider three different multi-input logic circuits: a two-input NOR gate, a three-input NOR gate, and a three-input composite NOR/NAND (NORAND) gate. For this power·delay analysis, the transient TCAD simulations are employed in a mixed-mode approach where circuit and device simulations are coupled together, culminating in the delay response of the circuits as well as the static/dynamic current components. The analysis shows that all circuits, except the 3-input NOR gate, has acceptable characteristics at low-power applications and static leakage limits all COSMOS circuits at high-bias conditions.