Raytheon BBN Technologies

The unique properties of superconductivity coupled with quantum accuracy bring unparalleled processing capabilities orders-of-magnitude faster than conventional semiconductor technologies for fabricating computer chips. One superconducting circuit technology, rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) logic, can attain gate speeds greater than 700 GHz and system clock rates approaching 100 GHz. Using RSFQ, we can develop superconducting analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with unsurpassed signal-to-noise ratio as well as linearity and large dynamic range. Also, we can realize superconducting digital signal processing (DSP) and other specific processing algorithms that are not attainable by conventional technologies. For example, a SASIC receiver allows ultra-sensitive and precise detection and identification even of very weak signals in the presence of strong interferers. As another example, we are applying this circuit technology to deep packet inspection (or regular expression processing) to support today’s network bandwidth of 100 GHz. Just as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have increased the performance while reducing size and power consumption for many commercial products, superconducting application-specific integrated circuits (SASICs) can do the same for the demanding application requirements.