A fine-grain reconfigurable VLSI for various applications including arithmetic operations is developed. In the fine-grain architecture, it is important to define a cell function which leads to high utilization of a logic block and reduction of a switch block. From the point of view, a universal-literal-based multiple-valued cell suitable for bit-serial reconfigurable computation is proposed. A series-gating differential-pair circuit is effectively employed for implementing a full-adder circuit of Sum and a universal literal circuit. Therefore, a simple logic block can be constructed using the circuit technology. Moreover, interconnection complexity can be reduced by utilizing multiple-valued signaling, where superposition of serial data bits and a start signal which indicates heading of one-word is introduced. Differential-pair circuits are also effectively employed for current-output replication, which leads to high-speed signaling to adjacent cells The evaluation is done based on 90 nm CMOS design rule, and it is made clear that the area of the proposed cell can be reduced to 78% in comparison with that of the CMOS implementatiuon. Moreover, its area-time product becomes 92% while the delay time is increased by 18%.

Toward the age of ultra-high-density digital ULSI systems, the development of new integrated circuits suitable for an ultimately fine geometry feature size will be an important issue. Resonant-tunneling (RT) diodes and transistors based on quantum effects in deep submicron geometry are such kinds of key devices in the next-generation ULSI systems. From this point of view, there has been considerable interests in RT diodes and transistors as functional devices for circuit applications. Especially, it has been recognized that RT functional devices with multiple peaks in the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic are inherently suitable for implementing multiple-valued circuits such as a multiple-state memory cell. However, very few types of the other multiple-valued logic circuits have been reported so far using RT devices. In this paper, a new multiple-valued programmable logic array (MVPLA) based on RT devices is proposed for the next-generation ULSI-oriented hardware implementation. The proposed MVPLA consists of 3 basic building blocks: a universal literal circuit, an AND circuit and a linear summation circuit. The universal literal circuit can be directly designed by the combination of the RT diodes with one peak in the I-V characteristic, which is programmable by adjusting the width of quantum well in each RT device. The other basic building blocks can be also designed easily using the wired logic or current-mode wired summation. As a result, a highdensity RT-diode-based MVPLA superior to the corresponding binary implementation can be realized. The device-model-based design method proposed in this paper is discussed using static characteristics of typical RT diode models.

We have developed a new functional MOS transistor called Neuron MOSFET (abbreviated as neuMOS or νMOS) which simulates the function of biological neurons. The new transistor is capable of executing a weighted sum calculation of multiple input signals and threshold operation based on the result of weighted summation, all in the voltage mode at a single transistor level. By utilizing its neuron-like very powerful functional capability, various circuits essential for multiple-valued logic operation have been designed using quite simple circuit configurations. The circuit designs for data conversion between the multivalued and binary logic systems and for generating universal literal functions are described and their experimental verifications are presented. One of the most important features of νMOS multivalued lagic circuit is that the circuit operates basically in the voltage mode, thus greatly reducing the power dissipation as compared to the conventional current mode circuitry. This is indeed most essential in implementing multivalued logic systems in ultra large scale integration. Another important feature of νMOS design is in its flexibility of implementing logic functions. The functional form of a universal literal function, for instance, can be arbitrarily altered by external signals without any modifications in its hardware configuration. A circuit representing multiple-valued multithreshold functions is also proposed.