Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) shows promise as a post silicon CMOS, low
power computational technology. Nevertheless, to generalize QCA for
next-generation digital devices, the ability to implement conventional
programmable circuits based on NOR, AND, and OR gates is necessary. To this
end, we devise a new QCA structure, the QCA matrix multiplier (MM), employing
the standard Coulomb blocked, five quantum dot (QD) QCA cell and
quasi-adiabatic switching for sequential data latching in the QCA cells. Our
structure can multiply two N x M matrices, using one input and one
bidirectional input/output data line. The calculation is highly parallelizable,
and it is possible to achieve reduced calculation time in exchange for
increasing numbers of parallel matrix multiplier units. We show convergent, ab
initio simulation results using the Intercellular Hartree Approximation for
one, three, and nine matrix multiplier units. The structure can generally
implement any programmable logic array (PLA) or any matrix multiplication based
operation.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, supplemental informatio