Design of Mixed-Signal Systems With Asynchronous Control

Abstract

This paper presents a novel workflow for the design of mixed-signal systems. Current methods rely on synchronous control logic and full-system simulation, which might lead to suboptimal results and even project respins due to critical errors. The proposed workflow aims to combine state-of-the-art tools for asynchronous circuit design and formal verification of analogue systems in a unified environment. The effectiveness of this methodology is demonstrated by the analysis of a buck converter.

Advances in Formal Methods for the Design of Analog/Mixed-Signal Systems

“…It puts emphasis on model generation (from simulation), sharing of related model representations (LPNs in LEMA and STGs in Workcraft), between analog and digital parts, and iterative specification synthesis and verification. The details of the flow and examples from the design of power converters can be found in our recent paper [45].…”

“…New visualization methods have been implemented in Workcraft for the behavior of asynchronous logic using timing diagrams, to facilitate easier comprehension of asynchronous circuits by analog designers. Finally, the basics of behavioral mining and formal verification of analogue circuits using the LEMA tool described in the previous section have been explored in [45].…”

“…These opportunities can be extracted from the simulation traces of the analog part using LEMA in the form of LPNs and converted to the STG format for subsequent resynthesis. The details of this procedure can be found in [45].…”