Analog EDA Finally Automated

Bosch transferred method to Cadence

R. Colin Johnson
4/1/2015 09:59 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. — Historically analog designers were almost mysterious and old-school as radio frequency (RF) designers. After acquiring years of experience manipulating the many parameters not present in digital designs, analog designers become fountains-of-knowledge in how to add the"secret sauce" to all the different sorts of analog circuits in use today, often reluctant to embrace automation as an alternative, according to presenters here at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD-2015, Mar 29-to-April 1).

Nevertheless, analog design automation tools that rival digital design automation tools are arriving on the scene. One approach is to use a design flow where traditional bottom-up techniques (standard cells) meet top-down automated optimization techniques according to professor Jurgen Scheible from the Robert Bosch Center Electronic Design Automation (EDA) division, at Reutlingen University (Germany). Bosch has spent considerable funding the automation of analog design tools, the technology for which it transferred to Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), according to Scheible.

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