A new tool for simulation of single electron transistor based microprocessor using vector file

Abstract

A microprocessor is a general-purpose device, which works on the user defined instructions. The design of next generation microprocessors demands high speed, high density and low power requirements that can be attained by prominent device like Single Electron Transistor (SET). Based on realizable SET parameters at room temperature and 800 mV operating voltage; an 8-bit SET based microprocessor is designed and simulated using Cadence Virtuoso environment. The simulation of the microprocessor requires complex stimuli to verify the design for multiple instructions. Conventionally, the simulation is performed by applying individual signal source to each signal. However, that is not optimum and viable for microprocessor designs. The Cadence Spectre simulator has a facility to simulate the design using vector file, which combines multiple signal sources in a text file. In addition, writing vector file manually is complex and erroneous. To overcome the problem, a tool is designed and developed that generates a vector file for user selected instructions and parameters. The usage of vector file makes the simulation straightforward and accurate. This paper describes the design of a tool for vector file generation.