Methodology for analog technology porting including performance tuning

Analog design retargeting by design knowledge reuse and circuit synthesis

“…For the value ranges v L i , v U i of x i , we again reuse the design knowledge in the source system. For the value ranges, we define them by first scaling the nominal values of the design variables in the source design to obtain an initial target design [7] and then uniformly construct an interval range with the scaled nominal values being the center of the interval range. For scaling, the principle is that the DC voltages at all nodes in the circuit blocks are scaled by VDD,T VDD,S and transistor widths/lengths scaled so that the small-signal transconductance g m of a transistor in the target design is the same as that in the source design (V DD stands for power supply, subscript T for target technology and S for source technology).…”

“…Second, how to avoid time-consuming manual design and tuning? In [7], to reuse the source design, scaling of transistor widths/lengths in the source system is performed to arrive at an initial design in the target technology. Then, a manual design method based on qualitative reasoning is used to size the initial target design until the overall system performance parameter achieves the specification.…”

Analog design migration: An overview

“…Design reuse based on an original working design has been investigated in [2], where circuit porting is suggested through qualitative reasoning. First, an initial scaling step generates a starting point in the new technology by readjusting the bias currents and transistor widths relative to the minimum length with a constant constraint.…”

“…• Handling complex functions rather than simple cells. Migration methodologies based on an original design [1], [2] make the following basic assumption: process variations are the same in both source and target processes. There is no special handling of design corners.…”

“…The first trial to migrate analog cells was presented in [2], where the information reused from the original layout are the relative positions of the building blocks and their aspect ratios. All blocks part of the floorplan are then generated automatically.…”