The Sizing Rules Method for CMOS and Bipolar Analog Integrated Circuit Synthesis

This paper presents the sizing rules method for basic building blocks in analog CMOS and bipolar circuit design. It consists of the development of a hierarchical library of transistor-pair groups as basic building blocks for analog CMOS and bipolar circuits, the derivation of a hierarchical generic list of constraints that must be satisfied to guarantee the function and robustness of each block, and the development of a reliable automatic recognition procedure of building blocks in a circuit schematic. Sizing rules efficiently capture design knowledge on the technology-specific level of transistor-pair groups. This reduces the effort and improves the resulting quality for analog circuit synthesis. Results of applications like circuit sizing, design centering, response surface modeling, or analog placement show the benefits of the sizing rules method.

I. Introduction

Analog components are an important part of integrated systems: either in terms of elements and area in mixed-signal systems or as vital parts in digital systems, for instance, power-on reset, pad driving, or clock generation. Despite their importance, the design automation for analog circuits still lags behind that of digital circuits. As a consequence, analog components are often the bottleneck in the design flow.