Synthesis and Optimization of Reversible Circuits - A Survey

Reversible logic circuits have been historically motivated by theoretical research in low-power electronics as well as practical improvement of bit-manipulation transforms in cryptography and computer graphics. Recently, reversible circuits have attracted interest as components of quantum algorithms, as well as in photonic and nano-computing technologies where some switching devices offer no signal gain. Research in generating reversible logic distinguishes between circuit synthesis, post-synthesis optimization, and technology mapping. In this survey, we review algorithmic paradigms --- search-based, cycle-based, transformation-based, and BDD-based --- as well as specific algorithms for reversible synthesis, both exact and heuristic. We conclude the survey by outlining key open challenges in synthesis of reversible and quantum logic, as well as most common misconceptions.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figures, 2 table

A Study of Optimal 4-bit Reversible Toffoli Circuits and Their Synthesis

Optimal synthesis of reversible functions is a non-trivial problem. One of the major limiting factors in computing such circuits is the sheer number of reversible functions. Even restricting synthesis to 4-bit reversible functions results in a huge search space (16! {\approx} 2^{44} functions). The output of such a search alone, counting only the space required to list Toffoli gates for every function, would require over 100 terabytes of storage. In this paper, we present two algorithms: one, that synthesizes an optimal circuit for any 4-bit reversible specification, and another that synthesizes all optimal implementations. We employ several techniques to make the problem tractable. We report results from several experiments, including synthesis of all optimal 4-bit permutations, synthesis of random 4-bit permutations, optimal synthesis of all 4-bit linear reversible circuits, synthesis of existing benchmark functions; we compose a list of the hardest permutations to synthesize, and show distribution of optimal circuits. We further illustrate that our proposed approach may be extended to accommodate physical constraints via reporting LNN-optimal reversible circuits. Our results have important implications in the design and optimization of reversible and quantum circuits, testing circuit synthesis heuristics, and performing experiments in the area of quantum information processing.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1003.191

Depth-Optimized Reversible Circuit Synthesis

In this paper, simultaneous reduction of circuit depth and synthesis cost of reversible circuits in quantum technologies with limited interaction is addressed. We developed a cycle-based synthesis algorithm which uses negative controls and limited distance between gate lines. To improve circuit depth, a new parallel structure is introduced in which before synthesis a set of disjoint cycles are extracted from the input specification and distributed into some subsets. The cycles of each subset are synthesized independently on different sets of ancillae. Accordingly, each disjoint set can be synthesized by different synthesis methods. Our analysis shows that the best worst-case synthesis cost of reversible circuits in the linear nearest neighbor architecture is improved by the proposed approach. Our experimental results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed approach to reduce cost and circuit depth for several benchmarks.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 5 tables; Quantum Information Processing (QINP) journal, 201

A Library-Based Synthesis Methodology for Reversible Logic

In this paper, a library-based synthesis methodology for reversible circuits is proposed where a reversible specification is considered as a permutation comprising a set of cycles. To this end, a pre-synthesis optimization step is introduced to construct a reversible specification from an irreversible function. In addition, a cycle-based representation model is presented to be used as an intermediate format in the proposed synthesis methodology. The selected intermediate format serves as a focal point for all potential representation models. In order to synthesize a given function, a library containing seven building blocks is used where each building block is a cycle of length less than 6. To synthesize large cycles, we also propose a decomposition algorithm which produces all possible minimal and inequivalent factorizations for a given cycle of length greater than 5. All decompositions contain the maximum number of disjoint cycles. The generated decompositions are used in conjunction with a novel cycle assignment algorithm which is proposed based on the graph matching problem to select the best possible cycle pairs. Then, each pair is synthesized by using the available components of the library. The decomposition algorithm together with the cycle assignment method are considered as a binding method which selects a building block from the library for each cycle. Finally, a post-synthesis optimization step is introduced to optimize the synthesis results in terms of different costs.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, Microelectronics Journal, Elsevie

Application of Permutation Group Theory in Reversible Logic Synthesis

The paper discusses various applications of permutation group theory in the synthesis of reversible logic circuits consisting of Toffoli gates with negative control lines. An asymptotically optimal synthesis algorithm for circuits consisting of gates from the NCT library is described. An algorithm for gate complexity reduction, based on equivalent replacements of gates compositions, is introduced. A new approach for combining a group-theory-based synthesis algorithm with a Reed-Muller-spectra-based synthesis algorithm is described. Experimental results are presented to show that the proposed synthesis techniques allow a reduction in input lines count, gate complexity or quantum cost of reversible circuits for various benchmark functions.Comment: In English, 15 pages, 2 figures, 7 tables. Proceeding of the RC 2016 conferenc