Ultra high-speed superconductor system design: Phase 2

Abstract

A COOL system based on superconductor Rapid Single-Flux-Quantum (RSFQ) technology is being developed at SUNY (Stony Brook, USA) within the framework of the Hybrid Technology MultiThreaded architecture (HTMT) project. The objective of the second phase of the project is the design study of a petaflops scale computer. We have found that a 0.8-μm RSFQ technology would make possible the implementation of the COOL system with multithreaded SPELL processors with an average clock frequency approaching 100 GHz, a pipelined cryo-memory with a 30-ps cycle and 2 TB/s bandwidth per processor, and an inter-processor network with a peak bandwidth of more than 1,000 Petabytes/s. Preliminary results show that an RSFQ system with 4096 processors can achieve a petaflops-level performance with the overall power load of 1 kW at 4 Kelvin, while occupying a physical space as small as 0.6 m³.