A simple design of optically pumped J - K flip-flop using a two GaAs-AlGaAs based optical microring resonator (OMRR) is introduced. The nonlinear property of a GaAs-AlGaAs based ring resonator is explored to use it as an optical switch. A high-intensity optical pump pulse is used for the switching operation of the OMRR. A theoretical model of the proposed J-K flip-flop circuit is developed by applying the delay line signal process approach. Z-domain model of the circuit is explored to analyze its performance. Various performance parameters- such as contrast ratio (CR), extinction ratio (ER), on-off ratio (Ton-off), and amplitude modulation (AM)-are determined from the simulation results obtained on MATLAB. The optimum values of CR, ER, Ton-off, and AM are calculated for the proposed model, which confirms the feasibility of the flip-flop. (C) 2017 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)