Researchers from Yokohama National University in Japan have developed a prototype microprocessor
using superconductor devices that are about 80 times more energy efficient than the state-of-the-art
semiconductor devices found in the microprocessors of today's high-performance computing systems.
As today's technologies become more and more integrated in our daily lives, the need for
more computational power is ever increasing.
Because of this increase, the energy use of that increasing computational power is growing
immensely.
For example, so much energy is used by modern day data centers that some are built near
rivers so that the flowing water can be used to cool the machinery.
The digital communications infrastructure that supports the Information Age that we
live in today currently uses approximately 10% of the global electricity.
Studies suggest that in the worst case scenario, if there is no fundamental change in the underlying
technology of our communications infrastructure such as the computing hardware in large data
centers or the electronics that drive the communication networks, we may see its electricity
usage rise to over 50% of the global electricity by 2030.
The team's research, published in Journal: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, details
an effort to develop a more energy efficient microprocessor architecture using superconductors,
devices that are incredibly efficient, but require certain environmental conditions to
operate.
To tackle this power problem, the team explored the use of an extremely energy-efficient superconductor
digital electronic structure, called the adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP), as a building
block for ultra-low-power, high-performance microprocessors, and other computing hardware
for the next generation of data centers and communication networks.
In this paper, the researchers wanted to prove that the AQFP is capable of practical energy-efficient
high-speed computing, and they did this by developing and successfully demonstrating
a prototype 4-bit AQFP microprocessor called MANA (Monolithic Adiabatic iNtegration Architecture),
the world's first adiabatic superconductor microprocessor.
The demonstration of their prototype microprocessor shows that the AQFP is capable of all aspects
of computing, namely: data processing and data storage.
The researchers also show on a separate chip that the data processing part of the microprocessor
can operate up to a clock frequency of 2.5 GHz making this on par with today's computing
technologies.
The researchers even expect this to increase to 5-10 GHz as they make improvements in their
design methodology and their experimental setup.
However, superconductors require extremely cool temperatures to operate successfully.
One would think that if you factor in the cooling required for a superconductor microprocessor,
the energy requirement would become undesirable and surpass current day microprocessors.
But according to the research team this, surprisingly, was not the case:
The AQFP is a superconductor electronic device, which means that additional power is needed
to cool the chips from room temperature down to 4.2 Kelvin to allow the AQFPs to go into
the superconducting state.
But even when taking this cooling overhead into account, the AQFP is still about 80 times
more energy-efficient when compared to the state-of-the-art semiconductor electronic
devices found in high-performance computer chips available today.
Now that the team has proven the concept of this superconductor chip architecture, they
plan to optimize the chip and determine the chip's scalability and speed post optimization.
In addition to building standard microprocessors, the team is also interested in examining how
AQFPs could assist in other computing applications such as neuromorphic computing hardware for
artificial intelligence as well as quantum computing applications.