Make a reversible chip

If you would like to contribute to reversible computing, why don’t you make a chip?

There many academic papers describing reversible logic circuit families, the results of circuit simulations, and sometimes measurements of fabricated chips. Making a chip used to require a project with a million-dollar (USD) budget and was further inaccessible to individuals and small groups because commercial semiconductor fabs required Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

Yet, the Sky130 open-source chip design program https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk emerged in the last couple years that allows anybody with internet access and a laptop to design a chip. Fabbing the design is possible through a Google/SkyWater free multi-project wafer fab https://www.skywatertechnology.com/mpw/open-source-mpw-program/. Basic testing should be possible with readily available lab equipment.

Let me describe what I did over a period of a couple weeks. Individuals and small groups can make important innovative contributions to technology at certain phases of development. So, I tried to see what I could do from an office in an extra bedroom in my house and with a handful of Windows 10/11 PCs. Having worked in the field for some time, my experience is not representative of a new entrant, but I wanted to demonstrate setting up the open-source tool chain to become an effective platform for reversible computing R&D.

The thinking stage

I devised the reversible logic family Q2LAL [DeBenedictis 21], [DeBenedictis 22] about a year ago and it had never been subject to intensive engineering analysis or physical testing, so it seemed like a good starting point. The basic replication unit in Q2LAL is an adiabatic amplifier followed by a transmission gate, illustrated in [DeBenedictis 21, Fig. 3 and 4c]. The circuit ultimately has to be lain out in arrays that effectively exploit symmetries inscrutably buried in the circuit structure. Fig. 1 is my second attempt at a layout planning. It is in an ad hoc format that I found convenient and which I will use for explanation.

The top quarter, outlined by a dotted gray rectangle with Â_i-1 on the left and Q̂_i on the right, has six transistors organized in a row. Each transistor is represented by the schematic symbol for a transistor (identifiable as a short vertical red line). The four transistors on the left of each row comprise an adiabatic amplifier [DeBenedictis 21, left side of Fig. 4c] and the two on the right are a transmission gate [DeBenedictis 21, small rectangle in Fig. 3b].

I created the layout in Fig. 2 using Magic, a tool in the open PDK. For the reader’s orientation, the six transistors in each row of Fig. 1 each correspond to a red (vertical) rectangle crossing a wider green or orange horizontal region. The vertical power and clock lines were not present at this point.

I created the layout in Fig. 2 with Fig. 1 visible in one window of a PC and the Magic workspace in a second window, going back and forth between the two until I could make a layout that was both compact and satisfied the constraints.

Replication

Q2LAL has dual-rail signaling, with the second-from-the-top gray rectangle in Fig. 1 processing the – rail [DeBenedictis 21, right side of Fig. 4c]. The circuits need signals from both rails, leading to the crossover between  and – signals in the top two quarters of Fig. 1. The top two quarters are flipped vertically with respect to accommodate the crossover (and likewise for the third and fourth quarters).

Q2LAL circuits compute in the forward direction and recover energy in the reverse direction. Energy recovery uses the circuit in the top two quarters, but horizontally flipped. Thus, the bottom half of Fig. 1 was created by flipping the graphic of the top half in Microsoft Word.

The entire structure in Fig. 1 must be designed so it can be replicated both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal replication controls the length of the shift register and vertical replication increases the word-width of the stored information.

Replication leads to geometric constraints. For example, the vertical blue (metal) lines would carry power (V), ground (G) and various clock phases φ to all the circuits in a column. But there is a complication. The circuit has one set of wires for the even-numbered circuits and another for the odd-numbered circuits. Thus, the symmetries of circuit must cause extension of each blue line to line up with a gap in the circuit above and below. This is easily seen to be true, but creating the layout required solving a puzzle.

I thus enhanced the layout in Fig. 2 to accommodate arrays, yielding Fig. 3.

Fig. 4 shows four copies of the layout in Fig. 3 in a stack with the following orientation changes:

• no change
• vertical flip
• horizontal flip
• 180-degree rotation

This yields a Q2LAL stage, such as the left or right half of [DeBenedictis 21, Fig. 3b]. An experienced designer will see that I have not fully mastered Sky130 and Magic.

Simulation

The next step was to integrate the layout with the Q2LAL ngspice simulations discussed elsewhere on this site (https://revcomp.org/q2lal/). Much of the dissipation in integrated circuits is due to the wires rather than the transistors, so simulation of the layout with wire capacitance would tend to validate the advantage of reversible computing over CMOS.

Unlike academic papers where schematics are created with just thinking, layouts like Fig. 2 can be automatically “extracted” to yield a netlist such as the one below. The netlist is pretty much what a designer would create manually for an academic paper and it can be verified as correct in a few minutes through examination.

* SPICE3 file created from q2v13.ext - technology: sky130A

.subckt q2v13
X0 G ck T G sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 ad=4.65e+11p pd=3.9e+06u as=1.28e+12p ps=1.07e+07u w=450000u l=150000u
X1 T -A G G sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 ad=0p pd=0u as=0p ps=0u w=450000u l=150000u
X2 T A phi0 G sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 ad=0p pd=0u as=2.7e+11p ps=2.1e+06u w=450000u l=150000u
X3 -Q phi3 T Vp sky130_fd_pr__pfet_01v8 ad=2.25e+11p pd=1.9e+06u as=2.7e+11p ps=2.1e+06u w=450000u l=150000u
X4 -Q phi7 T G sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 ad=4.075e+11p pd=3.6e+06u as=0p ps=0u w=450000u l=150000u
X5 T -A phi0 Vp sky130_fd_pr__pfet_01v8 ad=0p pd=0u as=2.25e+11p ps=1.9e+06u w=450000u l=150000u
.ends

However, design tools can also extract information about wires, such as length, resistance, and capacitance. This information is human readable, but understanding the impact on performance, dissipation, etc. requires circuit simulation.  For example, the underlined portion of the excerpt below (starting with “cap”) gives the capacitance between pairs of wires φ₀ and –Q.

timestamp 1651599653
version 8.3
tech sky130A
style ngspice()
scale 1000 1 500000
resistclasses 4400000 2200000 950000 3050000 120000 197000 114000 191000 120000 197000 114000 191000 48200 319800 2000000 48200 48200 12800 125 125 47 47 29 5
parameters sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 l=l w=w a1=as p1=ps a2=ad p2=pd
parameters sky130_fd_pr__pfet_01v8 l=l w=w a1=as p1=ps a2=ad p2=pd
node "T" 3028 286.743 -80 40 ndif 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 51200 2140 10800 420 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 50400 2360 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
[snip]
cap "phi0" "-Q" 30.2468
cap "-A" "ck" 13.56
[snip]
device msubckt sky130_fd_pr__nfet_01v8 1000 40 1001 41 l=30 w=90 "G" "phi7" 60 0 "T" 90 0 "-Q" 90 0
[snip]

Obtaining this information requires a test layout of the circuit so wire geometry is known and can be subject to a numerical assessment of how close the wires come to each other. Some circuits have more internal interconnectivity than other circuits, which leads to denser wiring with more crosstalk that ultimately reduces speed and increases power. These issues are inherent to any design process, but can be controlled with tools such as those that produced the diagrams in this document.

So, here is the unexpected and somewhat untidy story. The English description used a hierarchy of (1) dual-rail adiabatic amplifier [DeBenedictis 21, Fig. 4c] (2) dual-rail adiabatic amplifier+latch (3) bi-directional stage [DeBenedictis 21, Fig. 3b], but the layout was constructed as (1) adiabatic amplifier+latch+wire flyovers, Fig. 3 (2) dual-rail (3) bidirectional stage using wire flyovers, Fig. 4. So, I had to substantially rewire the sQ2.cir file to support the different hierarchy. The result is sQ130.cir in the repository. Note that sQ130.cir has more functions than the layout because it includes a test harness, creates plots, etc.

I then took the .spice file with parasitic extraction that Magic created and manually pasted the capacitance values into sQ130.cir. I included .if (0)-type lines so I could compare the dissipation with and without the parasitics. The results were 1.99532E-14 and 6.02372E-15 J with parasitics on and off.

Conclusions

I fulfilled my objective of validating the suitability of the open-source design flow, although I did not carry this specific project to an R&D milestone.

If I were to proceed as an individual, it would take me another couple months to make a test design that would contribute to the field (such as the note-note design https://revcomp.org/note-note/). The test design could be fabricated with the Google-subsidized multi-project wafer service, which has about a four-month turn-around time. After chips come back, testing is possible with readily available lab equipment – although some more exotic testing (cryo?) would take a lot of specialized equipment.

Setup and source code

In a very brief summary, I loaded the Docker version of the SkyWater Open Source PDK https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk on several Windows 10 and 11 laptops in my office. I have general knowledge of IC design from a university class, but the YouTube video Creating a Hierarchical Layout in Magic Using the Sky130 PDK [bminch 21] is a tutorial that describes commands specific to the Magic open sources.

The Github repository is not fully set up at the moment.

The Magic files are QAAmp11.mag, QLatch.mag, and QPhase.mag available at https://github.com/erikdebenedictis/Shift. The Github repository is not fully set up and this information may change.

An earlier version of the Magic data files can be downloaded with the links below. Due web page limitations, the file name extension has been changed from .mag to .txt. You will need to change the file names back to .mag, after which they can be loaded into the Magic tool.

Conclusions

I recommend the approach above for students and hobbyists. You can make a difference even with modest resources.

There is enough promise and opportunity in reversible computing that larger organizations and funding agencies are ponying up real R&D money. Such organizations and the people in them can perhaps take inspiration from this article and realize that the entry point may be lower than it was a few years ago.

References

[DeBenedictis 21] Quiet 2-Level Adiabatic Logic. Zettaflops, LLC Technical Report ZF009 https://ar.zettaflops.org/CATC/Q2LAL.pdf

[DeBenedictis 22] Q2LAL page on this website https://revcomp.org/Q2LAL.

[bminch 21] bminch. Creating a Hierarchical Layout in Magic Using the Sky130 PDK, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPppaGdjbj0