DESIGN ISSUES IN ULTRA-FAST ULTRA-LOW-POWER SUPERCONDUCTOR BATCHER-BANYAN SWITCHING FABRIC BASED ON RSFQ LOGIC MEMORY FAMILY/

The results are presented of the feasibility study of ultra-fast low-p ower superconductor digital switches based on Rapid Single-Flux-Quantu m (RSFQ) technology. RSFQ-based crossbar, Batcher-banyan, and shared b us switching fabrics are considered, and the complexity and performanc e parameters of these circuits have been estimated. The results show t hat the proposed SFQ digital switches with overall throughput of 5.76 Tbps operating at an internal clock frequency of similar to 60 GHz and dissipating as low as 45 mW power per fabric could effectively compet e with their semiconductor and photonic counterparts. The most compact and low-power architecture, the Batcher-banyan switching fabric with TDM switching elements, has been selected for implementation and will be discussed in the paper in detail. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.