Analog Layout Generation for Performance and Manufacturability

Koen Lampaert

Analog integrated circuits are very important as interfaces between the digital parts of integrated electronic systems and the outside world. A large portion of the effort involved in designing these circuits is spent in the layout phase. Whereas the physical design of digital circuits is automated to a large extent, the layout of analog circuits is still a manual, time-consuming and error-prone task. This is mainly due to the continuous nature of analog signals, which causes analog circuit performance to be very sensitive to layout parasitics. The parasitic elements associated with interconnect wires cause loading and coupling effects that degrade the frequency behaviour and the noise performance of analog circuits. Device mismatch and thermal effects put a fundamental limit on the achievable accuracy of circuits. For successful automation of analog layout, advanced place and route...