From Constraints to Tape-Out: Towards a Continuous AMS Design Flow

The effort in designing analog/mixed-signal (AMS) integrated circuits is characterized by the largely manual work involved in the design of analog cells and their integration into the overall circuit. This inequality in effort between analog and digital cells increases with the use of modern, more complex technology nodes. To mitigate this problem, this paper presents four methods to improve existing mixed-signal design flows: (1) automatic schematic generation from a system-level model, (2) flexible automatic analog layout generation, (3) constraint propagation and budget calculation for dependency resolution, and (4) verification of nonfunctional effects. The implementation of these steps results in a novel AMS design flow with a significantly higher degree of automation.