580 research outputs found
Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata using Buried Dopants
The use of buried dopants to construct quantum-dot cellular automata is
investigated as an alternative to conventional electronic devices for
information transport and elementary computation. This provides a limit in
terms of miniaturisation for this type of system as each potential well is
formed by a single dopant atom. As an example, phosphorous donors in silicon
are found to have good energy level separation with incoherent switching times
of the order of microseconds. However, we also illustrate the possibility of
ultra-fast quantum coherent switching via adiabatic evolution. The switching
speeds are numerically calculated and found to be 10's of picoseconds or less
for a single cell. The effect of decoherence is also simulated in the form of a
dephasing process and limits are estimated for operation with finite dephasing.
The advantages and limitations of this scheme over the more conventional
quantum-dot based scheme are discussed. The use of a buried donor cellular
automata system is also discussed as an architecture for testing several
aspects of buried donor based quantum computing schemes.Comment: Minor changes in response to referees comments. Improved section on
scaling and added plot of incoherent switching time
Thermal behavior of Quantum Cellular Automaton wires
We investigate the effect of a finite temperature on the behavior of logic
circuits based on the principle of Quantum Cellular Automata (QCA) and of
ground state computation. In particular, we focus on the error probability for
a wire of QCA cells that propagates a logic state. A numerical model and an
analytical, more approximate, model are presented for the evaluation of the
partition function of such a system and, consequently, of the desired
probabilities. We compare the results of the two models, assessing the limits
of validity of the analytical approach, and provide estimates for the maximum
operating temperature.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, uses revte
A Novel Reconfiguration Scheme in Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata for Energy Efficient Nanocomputing
Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is currently being investigated as an alternative to CMOS technology. There has been extensive study on a wide range of circuits from simple logical circuits such as adders to complex circuits such as 4-bit processors. At the same time, little if any work has been done in considering the possibility of reconfiguration to reduce power in QCA devices. This work presents one of the first such efforts when considering reconfigurable QCA architectures which are expected to be both robust and power efficient. We present a new reconfiguration scheme which is highly robust and is expected to dissipate less power with respect to conventional designs. An adder design based on the reconfiguration scheme will be presented in this thesis, with a detailed power analysis and comparison with existing designs. In order to overcome the problems of routing which comes with reconfigurability, a new wire crossing mechanism is also presented as part of this thesis
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