LOGIC THRESHOLD FOR MICRORING RESONATOR-BASED BDD CIRCUITS: PHYSICAL AND OPERATIONAL ANALYSES

Abstract

Moore’s Law has been the fuel of expansive innovation in computing. The chip industry kept the Moore’s law extant for almost four decades. However, the halt of the rapid progress of the silicon technology is incipient by reason of the physicallimitations. Emerging computing proposals suggest several alternatives to current computing paradigms and technology-bases. The photonic circuitry is one of the most promising candidates with its high operation speed, energy efficient passivecomponents, low crosstalk and appropriateness for parallelcomputation. Among various approaches to photonic logic, microring resonator-based Binary-Decision Diagram (BDD) architectures have a special place due to their small circuit footprint. However, the physical limitations imposed on their logic implementation has not been studied in depth to enable design of efficient circuits. In this paper, we study the physical structure and operational details of a microring resonator-based Half-Adder (HA) circuit and outline the conditions under which the performance and accuracy of information processing is compromised due to its physical characteristics. Our analyses significantly contribute to determining key physical features and operations concerning logic implementation of microring resonator based BDD HA, which informs the future design and operational optimization of the microring resonator-based BDD logic circuits.