Researchers from the National University of Yokohama, Japan, have completed the development and conducted the first tests of an experimental microprocessor built on the basis of superconducting base elents. This microprocessor is 80 times more efficient in terms of energy consumption than current computing devices made using CMOS technology. This is a huge prospect, given that 10 percent of the amount of electricity generated around the globe is consumed by computers.
The elementary functional unit of the superconducting microprocessor circuit is a non-shunted Josephson Junction(JJ) made of superconducting material Nb/alol (x)/Nb. The logical base unit of the microprocessor, built on the basis of JJ-crossings, is called the adiabatic quantum flux-parametron (AQFP).
On the basis of AQFP blocks, a 4-bit processor scheme is built, with a hybrid architecture that combines elements of the RISC architecture and the principles of flow-based information processing. Initially, this microprocessor, called MANA (Monolithic Adiabatic integration Architecture) and being the world's first adiabatic superconducting microprocessor, worked at a clock frequency of 100 kHz. In this mode, the researchers debugged and tested the modes of operation of the logical operation unit (ALU), the I / O system, register write and read operations, and the procedures for starting, pausing, and terminating programs.
After debugging the functional blocks, the clock frequency of the MANA microprocessor, operating at a temperature of 4.2 Kelvin, was raised first to 2.5 GHz, and a little later to 5 GHz. And already at this clock frequency, energy costs were measured, which turned out to be equal to 1.4 zj (zeta-Joule) per JJ-overrun when performing any one operation.
Note that the clock frequencies "taken" by the MANA microprocessor are already quite comparable to the values of clock frequencies at which traditional modern microprocessors operate. And the researchers plan to slightly modify the structure of the AQFP block in the near future so that the microprocessor can operate at a clock frequency of 10 GHz, while maintaining its efficiency indicator at the same level.