The Analog Designer's Toolbox (ADT): Towards A New Paradigm for Analog IC Design

The integrated circuit (IC) technology has witnessed an exponential advancement in the last decades and has changed every aspect in our life. On the other hand, the analog IC design flow did not experience any major change since the introduction of Berkeley SPICE in the 1970s, posing significant challenges to the design of complex systems in nanometer technologies and to the transfer of analog design expertise and knowledge. The Analog Designer^TM Toolbox (ADT) is a new analog design productivity and automation tool that addresses this problem and defines a new paradigm in analog IC design. ADT provides a turnkey solution that enables everyone to reap the benefits of the gm/ID design methodology powered by precomputed lookup tables (LUTs). At the device level, ADT gives an easy interface to automatically size devices given their performance metrics and plot arbitrary design charts involving complex expressions. At the block level, ADT gives the designer the power of interactive design space exploration, agile constraints management, design trade-offs visualization, live tuning, and blazing speed optimization. The aim of ADT is to boost productivity, restore designer's intuition, and make the design process systematic, optimized, and fun!