Functional Integration of Parallel Counters Based on Quantum-Effect Devices

This paper describes the design of depth-2 parallel counters with a novel circuit architecture basing on quantum-effect devices. The elementary components of the counters are linear threshold gates with fixed integer weights. To obtain a compact implementation each threshold gate consists of two serially connected resonant tunneling diodes which are integrated in a hybrid way together with multiple heterostructure field effect transistors. A potential application is the computation of arithmetic functions with a reduced logic depth in high performance digital signal processing systems.