This is an important element of the design and right at the center of the critical path. Within the ALU, the inputs to the adder will be registered, and its outputs will go to the address lines of synch RAM (among other destinations). So the critical path will include the CLK-to-Q delay of the input registers, the Address-to-CLK setup time for the RAM, and a couple of buffers in between. Allowing sufficient time for clock-skew and intrinsic trace delay, we get just about 6.5ns available for the adder at 100MHz!

This design is based on ttlworks' concept for a FET Switch Adder. The FET Switch Adder uses the fast data-to-Y tpd through the switches for the all-important ripple-carry chain. The data inputs are subject to the much slower Sel-to-Y tpd of the switches, but that delay is incurred only once for the whole chain. 

For the test, I used a variation as suggested by Dr Jefyll, with 74CBTLV3253 muxes, as follows:

The central challenge in the circuit is the build-up of capacitance along the carry chain. To explore the issue, the test sets up the carry chain to oscillate and trigger a 74LVC163 counter. We can configure the chain as 8-bits or 12-bits, and measure the frequency of oscillation as divided by the counter. The carry chain can also be split with an optional buffer (AND gate) after the 4th element to reduce the capacitance. The whole thing sits on about 1.5 square inches of board space:

At these distances, we don't have to worry about transmission line effects, so all connections are unterminated. Here's a trace of the counter output:

We're probing pin 11 on the '163 counter (divide by 16 output), and the carry-chain is configured as two 4-bit segments linked with the AND gate. We can calculate the tpd of the carry-chain based on the 4.29MHz measured frequency as follows:

• 8-bit carry-chain w/ AND gate: 4.29 MHz x 16 = 68.64 MHz = 14.5ns period / 2 = 7.25ns tpd

Removing the AND gate from the circuit is pretty much a wash -- the delay from the added capatiance is just about equivalent to gate delay we take out: 

• 8-bit carry-chain, no AND gate: 7.2ns

So, we have about 0.9ns per bit. The 12-bit carry chain showed a pretty linear growth in the delay, with 0.9ns per bit as well:

• 12-bit carry-chain: 10.8ns

The tpd of the adder includes the carry chain plus the switch-time of the 74CBTLV3253, which is 2.9ns (typical). That will remove one bit from the carry chain, so a net addition of about 2ns. The final inverter in the chain should be counted since the carry chain will need to be buffered from the rest of the CPU. So that gives us about 9.2ns for the “A to C” tpd of an 8-bit 74CBTLV3253 FET Switch Adder (roughly 1.2ns per bit). 

Not bad at all, and certainly MUCH faster than an equivalent circuit using conventional gates (a conventional ripple-carry adder would be roughly 3ns per bit with NC7SV logic). So a great result, all told, but unfortunately not quite fast enough for 100MHz operation. We’ll have to keep working to squeeze out just a little more performance out of this circuit.