Design Automation Methodology and Tools for Superconductive Electronics

Abstract

Josephson junction-based superconducting logic families have been proposed to implement analog and digital signals, which can achieve low energy dissipation and ultra-fast switching speed. There are two representative technologies: DC-biased RSFQ (rapid single flux quantum) technology and its variants that achieve a verified speed of 370 Ghz, and AC-biased AQFP (adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron) that achieves an energy dissipation near quantum limits. Despite extraordinary characteristics of the superconducting logic families, many technical challenges remain, including the choice of circuit fabrics and architectures that utilize the SFQ technology and the development of effective design automation methodologies and tools. This paper presents our work on developing design flows and tools for DC- and AC-biased SFQ circuits, leveraging unique characteristics and design requirements of the SFQ logic families. More precisely, physical design algorithms, including placement, clock tree routing, and signal routing algorithms targeting RSFQ circuits are presented first. Next, a majority/minority gate-based automatic synthesis framework targeting AQFP logic circuits is described. Finally, experimental results to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework and tools are presented.