Analogue IC Design Automation

Analogue and Radio Frequency (RF) integrated circuits (ICs) are a key component of many
electronic systems and are used in many applications including communications (such as
mobile telephones and Wi-Fi), control systems, and medical applications to name a few.
These circuits can account for up to 40% of time and cost in designing a new analogue or
mixed analogue/ digital ICs, and are responsible for over 50% of design iterations or
functionality changes (re-spins). Circuit designs are frequently transferred to new production
processes (or to smaller production processes) for cost or efficiency purposes or to add new
functionality both of which will require redesign and re-spins as such changes can cause
circuits to fail to perform as they did before. Semiconductor design houses spend many
person days/months in designing, porting, and re-spinning activities. Due to a lack of
automated tools this is a labour intensive process requiring manual intervention and multiple
design iterations, with correspondingly significant cost and time issues. Analogue circuit
design requires specialist skills which are in short supply; analogue design methodology has
barely changed and still revolves around an iterative design process. There is little in the way
of automated Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools to support the design process,
furthermore automation of the porting of analogue circuit designs is almost non-existent. This
project will attempt to address these issues by researching algorithms and methods that will
facilitate the research and development of a software tool which will address these problems
and facilitate automated design of, and porting of, analogue circuits. The eventual aim of the
project is a tool that will be an add-on to existing design software used in the industry, which
will maximise commercial potential by not requiring end users to change their existing EDA
software tools and design processes.