CNTFET‐based ternary address decoder design

Abstract

Summary With the end of Moore's law, new paradigms are investigated for more scalable computing systems. One of the promising directions is to examine the data representation toward higher data density per hardware element. Multiple valued logic (MVL) emerged as a promising system due to its advantages over binary data representation. MVL offers higher information processing within the same number of digits when compared with binary systems. Accessing memory is considered one of the most power‐ and time‐consuming instructions within a microprocessor. In the quest for building an entire ternary computer architecture, we propose investigating the potential opportunities of ternary address decoders. This paper presents three different designs for ternary address decoder based on CNTFET. The first design is based on a cascade of Ternary to Binary blocks (T2B) and a binary decoder. The second design is built using the hierarchical structure and enables signals. The third is designed utilising a pre‐decoder and ternary logic gates. A comparison of the proposed designs and the binary address decoder in terms of power and delay under different supply voltage and temperature values is introduced. Simulation results show that the second design has the least power and delay of the proposed ternary designs.