ORACLE

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Project Title A Method and System for Design and Optimization of Configurable Analog and Radio Frequency Circuits (SRA) Track Code 2004-052   Abstract The IC design and manufacturing costs are increasing to the point that fewer products have the volume required to amortize the large upfront NRE (nonrecurring engineering) costs. This is especially the case for mixed-signal ICs that are designed in sub-100nm technologies where the technology advances are making application-specific SoC (system-on-chip) designs technically feasible but the economic realities require even higher product volumes. Design reuse and analog-synthesis methodologies have substantially addressed the design cost and risk challenges. For a given circuit topology and specifications simulation based optimization and equation based optimization have been effective for automating the design process. However the large process parameter variability that is evident for nanoscale technologies along with the complex nature of parasitic coupling can cause the design risk hence cost to remain quite high even for the best synthesis approaches. Our invention is a method and system (which we refer to as ORACLE) that incorporates the shared-use and reuse benefits of configurable circuits while offering performance that is comparable to a fully customized design. Instead of a flow to optimize a circuit for a single application our system supports a methodology for configurable designs that share common structures. Unlike optimization for a single application the shared common structure can be well characterized via simulation or measurement before it is configured for multiple applications thereby providing the predictability that is needed for a risk-free robust design. The proposed optimization infrastructure is applicable to configurable designs in general. Our results demonstrate that metal-mask configurability can produce performance comparable to a fully customized application-specific design.