High-speed Josephson integrated circuit technology

The author describes recent progress in high-speed integrated circuits using niobium junctions. He briefly describes the circuit fabrication process and then introduces the modified variable threshold logic (MVTL) gate family. The lowest experimentally obtained MVTL OR-gate delay was only 2.5 ps with a power consumption of 17 mu W/gate. This gate family is used in various high-speed logic circuits, such as 8-bit shift registers, 16-bit ALUs (arithmetic logic units), and 4-bit microprocessors. The author confirmed the high-speed operation of less than 10 ps per gate on average for these circuits. A novel high-sensitivity magnetic sensor using a SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device) was also developed. It is called a single-chip SQUID magnetometer because the feedback circuit, which is operated at room temperature is a conventional SQUID system, has been integrated on the same chip as the SQUID sensor itself.<>