Digital Superconducting Electronics Design Tools—Status and Roadmap

At the start of the most ambitious development program for superconducting electronics circuit design tools to date-the IARPA SuperTools Program-we compile a comprehensive overview of the state of design tool development and use in the superconducting electronics community. Earlier design software roadmaps and tools were focused heavily on the device and gate level, with reasonably simple synthesis at the level of thousands of gates. Today, this is mostly still adequate for analog circuits, but completely inadequate for very large scale integration digital systems. Superconducting electronics circuit design tools today are still fragmented, incomplete, and insufficient for the design of very large scale integration circuits. Electronic design tools should enable design and verification of integrated circuits from process modeling right up to full system yield and reliability modeling. Progress and requirements to bring about sophisticated design tools are discussed.