Design of a Reversible ALU Based on Novel Programmable Reversible Logic Gate Structures

Reversible logic is widely being considered as the potential logic design style for implementation in modern nanotechnology and quantum computing with minimal impact on physical entropy. Recent advances in reversible logic allow for improved quantum computer algorithms and schemes for corresponding computer architectures. Significant contributions have been made in the literature towards the design of reversible logic gate structures and arithmetic units, however, there are not many efforts directed towards the design of reversible ALUs. In this paper, we propose the design of two programmable reversible logic gate structures targeted at ALU implementation and their use in the realization of an efficient reversible ALU is demonstrated. The proposed ALU design is verified and its advantages over the only existing ALU design are quantitatively analyzed.