Evidence Hub

An Energy-Aware Model for the Logic Synthesis of Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata

Frank Sill Torres, R. Wille, Philipp Niemann, R. Drechsler

IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, 2018

184 citations

Abstract

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) are an emerging field-coupled nanotechnology with remarkable performance and energy efficiency. In order to enable the exploration of this technology, we propose a model for the logic synthesis of QCA circuits that, for the first time, considers and abstracts all main physical aspects—in particular, energy dissipation. To this end, we review in detail how energy is dissipated in QCA cells and present a corresponding environment that allows for the estimation of the energy dissipation with respect to any specific set of technology parameters. Based on that, we derive a model for logic synthesis. A case study confirms the accuracy of the proposed model and reveals that interconnections have a significant impact in this technology—motivating a more rigorous consideration. These findings eventually provide the basis for a new generation of synthesis approaches at the logic level that are explicitly dedicated to QCA systems.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free