Recent trends in semiconductors have seen a significant growth in analog and RF IC design. Even many traditionally “digital” designs have had to embrace high speed interfaces, RF elements and complex memories meaning that they are increasingly Analog Mixed Signal circuits.
Despite this, analog design methods have remained largely unchanged for over a decade. More than any other area of IC design, analog circuit development is heavily dependent on the knowledge of individual designers. AgO Inc. offers the new AnXplorer circuit optimisation tool to improve analog and RF design productivity.

The heart of AnXplorer is a new multi-modal, multi-objective optimisation algorithm. Circuit designers can use AnXplorer to rapidly explore the design space to evaluate different circuit topologies. It can also be used to find a robust design solution over a range of variations in the process, temperature and supply voltage.

AnXplorer can readily be used with existing design environments. It uses the following inputs:

• unsized SPICE netlist
  
• design objectives and constraints
  
• design variables that AnXplorer can tune
  
• a set of required "corners" over which the design must meet specification
  
• Logarithmic design space partition to locate variable ranges rapidly
  
  The optimisation tool generates the following outputs:
  
• optimised and sized netlist
  
• exploration database for trade-off analysis.

AnXplorer supports both simulation based and equation based optimisation approaches or a combination of both. Unlike the commonly used weight-based prioritization used in competing tools, AnXplorer enables the user to specify objectives in a relative order thus prioritizing the order in which the objectives are achieved.

Sizing circuit elements to meet a set of design objectives and constraints is normally a labour intensive task. AnXplorer can significantly improve the productivity of design teams by automating this process and allowing designers to focus on exploring the design space and choosing from alternative circuit topologies. By finding robust design solutions AnXplorer helps achieve a robust design point for any circuit over a specified range of "corners". Finding robust circuits helps improve yield and improving the probability of first time silicon success.