Electronic Design Automation tools for superconducting circuits

Abstract

Abstract Superconducting integrated circuits have long been completely handcrafted or at best designed with a loose collection of tools that require manual manipulation of data and design transfer between tools. Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software development requires significant investment of resources to track the evolution of integrated circuit fabrication processes, which has only been possible commercially for highly successful semiconductor integrated circuit processes. The IARPA SuperTools project which started in 2017 is the largest known investment to date made in superconducting EDA tool development. SuperTools is divided into two main categories: high-level tools for the synthesis of digital logic circuits, clock networks and placed-and-routed layouts for systems such as processors with millions of logic gates; and physical-level tools for the design, simulation, optimisation, verification, layout and parameter extraction of devices and digital logic cells with the inclusion of fabrication process simulation. In this paper the modules developed for the ColdFlux project under SuperTools are discussed from device modelling to chip tape-out. Progress on parameter extraction tools is highlighted.