Cryogenic reconfigurable logic with superconducting heater cryotron: Enhancing area efficiency and enabling camouflaged processors

Published

October 10, 2023

Author(s)

Shamiul Alam, Dana Rampini, Bakhrom Oripov, Adam McCaughan, Ahmedullah Aziz

Abstract

Superconducting electronics are among the most promising alternatives to conventional CMOS technology, thanks to the ultra-fast speed and ultra-high energy efficiency of the superconducting devices. Having a cryogenic control processor is also a crucial requirement for scaling the existing quantum computers up to thousands of qubits. Despite showing outstanding speed and energy efficiency, Josephson junction-based circuits suffer from several challenges such as flux trapping leading to limited scalability, difficulty in driving high impedances, and so on. Three-terminal cryotron devices have been proposed to solve these issues, which can drive high impedances (⁠ >100 kΩ⁠) and are free from any flux trapping issue. In this work, we develop a reconfigurable logic circuit using a heater cryotron (hTron). In conventional approaches, the number of devices to perform a logic operation typically increases with the number of inputs. However, here, we demonstrate a single hTron device-based logic circuit that can be reconfigured to perform 1-input copy and NOT, 2-input AND and OR, and 3-input majority logic operations by choosing suitable biasing conditions. Consequently, we can perform any processing task with a much smaller number of devices. Also, since we can perform different logic operations with the same circuit (same layout), we can develop a camouflaged system where all the logic gates will have the same layout. Therefore, this proposed circuit will ensure enhanced hardware security against reverse engineering attacks.

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0170187

Local Download

Citation

Alam, S. , Rampini, D. , Oripov, B. , McCaughan, A. and Aziz, A. (2023), Cryogenic reconfigurable logic with superconducting heater cryotron: Enhancing area efficiency and enabling camouflaged processors, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0170187, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=936927 (Accessed April 28, 2024)