A 4-valued ECL encoder and decoder circuit

The authors present the prototype of a 4-valued ECL encoder and decoder circuit that has been designed as a test chip for the realization of 4-valued cells to be used in interconnection networks. The hardware implementation of such a network in a SIMD or a MIMD computer architecture leads to a significant reduction of the number of wires. Static and dynamic characteristics are presented together with results on the propagation of 4-valued signals. Noise margins are compared for 2-valued and 4-valued versions.