Development and Demonstration of Routing and Placement EDA Tools for Large-Scale Adiabatic Quantum-Flux-Parametron Circuits

Adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP) logic is a very energy-efficient superconductor logic due to zero static power dissipation and adiabatic switching operation. However, there is a shortage of electronic design automation (EDA) software tools adaptable to AQFP logic. Such tools are essential for designing large-scale-integration circuits efficiently. Therefore, we have developed a first set of EDA tools that handle cell placement and wiring, written in SKILL, the Cadence scripting language. Our tools also consider the maximum wire length constraint that exists in AQFP logic. First, AQFP logic cells are repositioned via the genetic algorithm to minimize the number of wires that violate the wiring length constraint. Buffers are then automatically inserted as signal repeaters for logic rows where the violations still exist. We then complete the logic wiring of the circuit using the channel routing algorithm. We demonstrate the usability of the EDA tools by designing a 16-bit adder as well as a randomly generated test circuit.