From system specification to layout: seamless top-down design methods for analog and mixed-signal applications

Design automation for analog/mixed-signal (A/MS) circuits and systems is still lagging behind compared to what has been reached in the digital area. As System-on-Chip (SoC) designs include analog components in most cases, these analog parts become even more a bottleneck in the overall design process. The paper is dedicated to latest R&D activities within the MEDEA+ project ANASTASIA+. Main focus will be the development of seamless top-down design methods for integrated analog and mixed-signal systems and to achieve a high level of automation and reuse in the A/MS design process. These efforts are motivated by the urgent need to close the current gap in the industrial design flow between system specification and design on the one hand and block-level circuit design on the other hand. The paper will focus on three subtopics starting with the topdown design flow with applications from circuit sizing, design centering, and automated behavioral modeling. The next part focuses on modeling and simulation of specific functionalities in sigma-delta design while the last section is dedicated to a mixed-signal System-on-Chip design environment. 1

JESSI AC12. Analog Expert Design System. Phase 2 Abschlussbericht

Available from TIB Hannover: F95B1628+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie (BMFT), Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

Analog expert design system Final report (1995-1996)

The main objective of this JESSI project was the development of methods and tools for the analog and mixed analog/digital circuit design. During phase II of the project ('92-'94) major progress was achieved in the area of tools supporting and improving the different steps of the design flow. Based on these results the goals for phase III ('95-'96) were defined, aiming at even more optimized tools to be used in the design flow. TEMIC put the main emphasis on the following topics: In the area of Analog Simulation a design centring tool was evaluated in practical use and substantially enhanced. A prototype tool performing thermal-electrical simulation was developed together with ANACAD. For the development of macro models VHDL-A was tested and the visual programming environment ViCE was created. For the verification of the electrical behaviour of circuits the tool NWB was developed, which is based on netlists. As a requirement for Circuit Synthesis TEMIC performed a systematic analysis and documentation of selected circuit classes. Symbolic analysis techniques were evaluated for the investigation of circuits. For the implementation of knowledge as well as execution of circuit synthesis the tool ACSYN was further enhanced. It is also well suited to explore the property-space of a circuit. The developed Layout Synthesis tool ALSYN was used in production and further enhanced concerning interactivity. Concurrently placement and routing algorithms were improved. A major step in increasing efficiency for analog layout design was done by using these tools. The developed compaction tool CAMBIO-XT was especially applied to layouts being transferred to a new process, showing also big reduction in design time. For the extraction of substrate parasitics improvements were achieved concerning handling of higher frequencies. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: F97B906 / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman

Analog Expert Design System (AEDS) Abschlussbericht

Design automation has reached a considerable level in the digital field at the beginning of the project, whereas for analog and mixed analog/digital design it lags far behind. Therefore it has been the main objective of the project 'Analog Expert Design System' to support an environment for the analog and mixed analog/digital IC- and system design, which assures optimized performance combined with short time to market. Tools for analysis of analog and mixed analog/digital circuits were improved by new methods. In the field of analog circuit synthesis tools were evaluated and improved on the basis of knowledge and experience of analog experts. For the layout synthesis of analog circuits a new tool has been developed. For the verification of these tools an example library was designed including functional macro-models, layout module generators as well as acquired, documented and coded knowledge for analog circuit design. Furthermore new tools were implemented into frameworks or design environments. The work performed improved analog and mixed analog/digital design considerably. On this basis further development work will be done to make analog design even more effective and to close the gap between the design of digital and analog or mixed analog/digital circuits. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F95B1200+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman