An Exact Method for Design Exploration of Quantum‐dot Cellular Automata
Marcel Walter1,a, Robert Wille2,3,d, Daniel Große1,3,b, Frank Sill Torres1,4,e and Rolf Drechsler1,3,c
1Group of Computer Architecture, University of Bremen, Germany
am_walter@uni-bremen.de
bgrosse@uni-bremen.de
cdrechsler@uni-bremen.de
2Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
drobert.wille@jku.at
3Cyber Physical Systems, DFKI GmbH, Bremen, Germany
4Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
efranksill@ufmg.br
ABSTRACT
Quantum‐dot Cellular Automata (QCA) are an emerging computation technology in which basic states are represented by nanosize particles and logic operations are conducted through corresponding effects such as Coulomb interaction. This allows to overcome physical boundaries of conventional solutions such as CMOS and, hence, constitutes a promising direction for future computing devices. Despite these promises, however, the development of (automatic) design methods for QCAs is still in its infancy. In fact, QCA circuits are mainly designed manually thus far and only few heuristics are available. This frequently leads to unsatisfactory results and generally makes it hard to evaluate the quality of respective QCA designs. In this work, we propose an exact solution for the design of QCA circuits that can be configured e. g. to generate circuits that satisfy certain design objectives and/or physical constraints. For the first time, this allows for design exploration of QCA circuits. Experimental evaluations and case studies demonstrate the benefit of the proposed solution.
