EDA framework development for the simulation of field-coupled nanocomputing circuits

In 1965 and later revised in 1975, Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors was doubling every 24 months and would continue to do so. Unfortunately the shrinking of transistors is reaching its limits and has already started to slow down. For this reason new materials and devices has been introduced to continue the scaling of digital electronics performance and efficiency. In particular, the QCA (Quantum-dot Cellular Automata) technology is one of the most promising thanks to a lower power consumption, compatibility with CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) fabrication process and their non-volatile nature. Molecular and magnetic QCA are two implementation alternatives of this technology. ToPoliNano (TOrino POLItecnico NANOtechnologies) framework has been created in order to facilitate the studies on these new technologies. It is developed at VLSI Research group of the Electronics and Telecommunications Department at Politecnico di Torino and has been designed to analyse these emerging technologies, allowing a workflow similar to the one available for CMOS. It is composed by two separate tools: ToPoliNano and MagCAD. The thesis was focused in the integration inside ToPoliNano of the FCN (Field-Coupled Nanocomputing) solver which has been developed at VLSI Research group at Politecnico di Torino. Subsequently I worked on developing a FCN 3D Viewer able to visualize the simulation results. Regarding the FCN solver a new output file format has been proposed that allows to save the simulations of iNML (In-plane Nano-Magnet Logic) and MolQCA (Molecular QCA) technologies trying to be more efficient avoiding the introduction of redundant information that are already contained in layout files but still remaining generic in order to allows the introduction of other technologies in future. This version allows to save two types of output files: a single file containing a table of results and a set of files each containing a time instant of the simulation. In order to increase the performance all output samples are stored in two separate buffers, one for each output type, before the real write to file operation. The time step in which the output samples are saved can be set independently between the two buffers but with the constraint that they must be a multiple of the simulation resolution specified by the user. The FCN Viewer is a new tool useful to navigate and inspect in a 3D representation the simulation results produced by the FCN Solver. It currently supports the visualization of iNML and MolQCA technologies. This tool takes as input the layout file generated by the ToPoliNano or MagCAD tool and the simulation result files produced by the FCN solver to show the simulation results that can be a magnetic field for iNML or the charge distribution for MolQCA. It has been developed using Qt libraries for creating the graphical user interface in combination with the OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) for the 3D visualization of the circuit. These allow to create a cross-platform application that can be used on Linux, Windows and macOS. In conclusion there are some possible features that can be implemented in future works. For example the expansion to support other technologies or combine the workflow of these emerging technologies with the existing one available for CMOS in order to generate and simulate hybrid technology circuits.