New Design Principles for Cold Electronics

Josephson junctions, cryogenic CMOS, and adiabatic circuits were proposed as computing options decades ago, but never got traction due to competition from room-temperature CMOS. However, quantum computer control electronics naturally requires cryogenic temperatures, making a deeper investigation of these technologies timely. We argue that a technology hybrid and new system design principles are needed, which we illustrate with adiabatic cryo-CMOS circuits playing an unanticipated but very important role. Transistor redesign will lead to even further improvement beyond what's illustrated in this paper, but more research will be needed to know how much.