  The field of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) is crucial for
microelectronics, but the increasing complexity of Integrated Circuits (ICs)
poses challenges for conventional EDA: Corresponding problems are often NP-hard
and are therefore in general solved by heuristics, not guaranteeing optimal
solutions. Quantum computers may offer better solutions due to their potential
for optimization through entanglement, superposition, and interference. Most of
the works in the area of EDA and quantum computers focus on how to use EDA for
building quantum circuits. However, almost no research focuses on exploiting
quantum computers for solving EDA problems. Therefore, this paper investigates
the feasibility and potential of quantum computing for a typical EDA
optimization problem broken down to the Min-$k$-Union problem. The problem is
mathematically transformed into a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization
(QUBO) problem, which was successfully solved on an IBM quantum computer and a
D-Wave quantum annealer.
