CAREER: Universal Design Automation Framework for Analog Integrated Systems

职业：模拟集成系统的通用设计自动化框架

• 批准号: 2239033
• 负责人: Shaolan Li
• 金额: $ 52.76万
• 依托单位: Georgia Tech Research Corporation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-01-01 至 2027-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2239033&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Universal; Design; Automation; Framework

Analog integrated circuits (ICs) are indispensable components in modern electronics. They allow computers to interact with the real world by performing key functions such as sensor interfacing, signal conditioning, power delivery, and energy harvesting. Their importance keeps growing as these functions are increasingly essential in the next-generation artificial intelligence, automotive, and medical applications that seek to sense, learn, and act anytime, anywhere. To meet the surging market demand, it is critical to ensure the development and production of analog ICs are agile, low-cost, and high-quality. However, this goal is currently being hindered by two grand challenges. On the technical level, the analog IC design practice in the industry to date remains a slow, experience-demanding manual process due to the lack of a general-purpose, reliable, and scalable analog design automation tool. This deficiency imposes a severe bottleneck for cost and design time reduction. Additionally, societal factors include experienced designers retiring fast while younger generations may shy away from pursuing an IC designer career. A paradigm shift in analog IC design practices is needed to prevent this analog IC productivity crisis from turning into a pressing roadblock for technology development and industry growth. To that end, this CAREER research aims to establish and validate a novel general-purpose analog IC design automation flow that overcomes the existing productivity barrier. The research will lead to a game-changing tool that allows designers to turn their ideas into circuit structures for a wide range of analog systems in a LEGO-like plug-and-play manner, improves their design reliably with machine learning, and generates fabrication-ready mask layouts swiftly. It will not only bring radical improvement to analog IC productivity and accelerate new technology development but also create a far-reaching impact on the competitiveness of the US semiconductor industry. The integrated education activities will also revolutionize IC technology education at both undergraduate and graduate levels, facilitating workforce revitalization.Analog IC design is conventionally deemed a highly ad-hoc practice, where high-level abstraction is hardly feasible. Although analog design automation (ADA) has received growing attention in the past decade, there is a lack of an ADA solution that combines versatile system-scale handling capabilities, reliability, and sufficient human interactions. In this research, the investigator identifies a path of breakthrough. This framework is established through endeavors in three research thrusts. (1) Development of an innovative unified analog system modeling method, which can describe a wide range of analog systems in the form of linear filter models built from a common set of basic operation cells. This method includes an intelligent synthesis algorithm and a user interface to aid designers in turning their thoughts into models. (2) Development of a soft cell concept, which performs on-the-fly circuit creation for the operation cell. This idea will address the reliability issue through a software-hardware co-design methodology. (3) Development of an early performance prediction mechanism that guides designers to achieve better results. The framework will be thoroughly validated by applying it to a practical biomedical system-on-chip design and demonstrating competitive circuit performances via real silicon measurements. In essence, the project closely incorporates the interdisciplinary efforts of modeling, circuit design, and algorithm, a unique path in ADA research. The generated knowledge bridges the circuit design community and the electronic design automation (EDA) community to catalyze closer collaboration and co-development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

模拟综合电路（IC）是现代电子中必不可少的组件。它们使计算机可以通过执行关键功能（例如传感器接口，信号调理，功率传递和能量收集）来与现实世界进行交互。它们的重要性不断增长，因为这些功能在下一代人工智能，汽车和医疗应用中越来越重要，这些功能旨在随时随地在任何地方进行感知，学习和行动。为了满足市场需求，至关重要的是要确保模拟IC的发展和生产是敏捷，低成本和高质量的。但是，目前这两个巨大的挑战阻碍了这个目标。在技​​术层面上，由于缺乏通用，可靠和可扩展的模拟设计自动化工具，迄今为止，迄今为止，行业中的模拟IC设计实践仍然是一个缓慢，经验丰富的手动过程。这种缺陷施加了严重的瓶颈，以减少成本和设计时间。此外，社会因素包括经验丰富的设计师快速退休，而年轻一代可能会回避从事IC设计师职业。需要在模拟IC设计实践中进行范式转变，以防止这种模拟IC生产力危机变成技术发展和行业增长的紧迫障碍。为此，这项职业研究旨在建立和验证一种新型的通用模拟IC设计自动化流，从而克服了现有的生产力障碍。这项研究将导致一种改变游戏规则的工具，使设计人员可以以乐高的插件插件的方式将自己的想法转变为各种模拟系统的电路结构，从而通过机器学习可靠地改进其设计，并迅速生成适合制造的面罩布局。它不仅会为模拟IC生产力带来根本性的提高，并加速新技术的发展，而且还会对美国半导体行业的竞争力产生深远的影响。综合教育活动还将在本科和研究生水平上彻底改变IC技术教育，从而促进劳动力振兴。Analog IC设计通常被认为是一种高度临时的实践，在该实践中，高级抽象几乎是不可行的。尽管模拟设计自动化（ADA）在过去十年中受到了越来越多的关注，但缺乏ADA解决方案，该解决方案结合了多功能系统尺度的处理能力，可靠性和足够的人类互动。在这项研究中，研究人员确定了一条突破的途径。该框架是通过三项研究推力的努力建立的。 （1）开发创新的统一模拟系统建模方法，该方法可以用线性滤波器模型的形式描述广泛的模拟系统，该模型由一组常见的基本操作单元组构建。该方法包括智能合成算法和用户界面，以帮助设计师将思想转化为模型。 （2）开发软单元概念，该概念为操作单元执行直通电路创建。这个想法将通过软件硬件共同设计方法解决可靠性问题。 （3）开发早期绩效预测机制，该机制指导设计师取得更好的结果。该框架将通过将其应用于片上实用的生物医学系统设计，并通过实际的硅测量结果彻底验证框架。本质上，该项目紧密结合了ADA研究中独特的道路，建模，电路设计和算法的跨学科工作。产生的知识桥接了电路设计社区和电子设计自动化（EDA）社区，以促进更紧密的协作和共同发展。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准通过评估来获得支持的。