SHF: Small: Collaborative Research: Integrated Verification, Built-in Self-test, and Tuning for Digitally-Intensive Analog Systems

设计模拟集成电路与其说是一门科学，不如说是一门艺术。它们的连续性质使得它们很难在制造之前验证其正确性，也很难在制造后进行测试以消除故障。这一事实导致了设计错误，迫使成本高昂的重新旋转(重复设计和制造过程)，甚至更糟糕的是，有缺陷的部件被运往客户手中。为了解决这个问题，工程师们正在探索数字密集型模拟电路的使用。在这些电路中，设计者在大多数实现中使用更简单的0-1二进制数字假设，并且他们仅在绝对必要时使用模拟元件。虽然这有一些优势，但也带来了新的挑战，因为数字和模拟设计的传统验证和测试方法截然不同。该项目正试图应对这些挑战。特别是，该项目正在探索设计时验证以及新的内置自检和调优技术的集成。这种集成不仅可以联合增强设计的正确性和稳健性，从而实现设计质量的整体保证，还可以通过内置的数字辅助测试和调整来验证自我修复的模拟系统。这项工作的更广泛影响是，它将使对广泛应用至关重要的纳米级稳健计算系统的设计成为可能。此外，跨学科探索将为解决具有实际意义的研究问题提供新的机会，并提供教育机会，使学生在理论和应用方面都有良好的基础。PIS将促进本科生和来自代表性不足群体的学生参与研究。这项工作的研究成果将纳入本科生和研究生课程，并在研究界广泛传播。开发的软件计算机辅助设计工具将在公共领域发布。

Designing analog integrated circuits is more of an art than a science. Their continuous nature makes them difficult to both verify to be correct before fabrication as well as difficult to test to be free of faults after fabrication. This fact leads to design errors forcing costly re-spins (repetitions of the design and fabrication process) and even worse faulty parts being shipped to customers. In an attempt to address this problem, engineers are exploring the use of digitally-intensive analog circuits. In these circuits, designers use the simpler 0-1 binary digital assumption for the majority of the implementation, and they only use analog components when absolutely essentially. While this has some advantages, it creates new challenges as traditional verification and test methodologies for digital and analog design are extremely different. The project is attempting to address these challenges. In particular, the project is exploring the integration of both design-time verification as well as new built-in self-test and tuning techniques. This integration will allow not only joint enhancement of design correctness and robustness, hence a holistic guarantee of design quality, but also verification of self healing analog systems with built-in digitally-assisted test and tuning.The broader impact of this work is that it will enable the design of nanoscale robust computing systems vital to a wide range of applications. Also, interdisciplinary explorations will provide new opportunities for solving research problems of practical significance and offer educational opportunities to make students well grounded in both theory and application. The PIs will promote the research participation from undergraduate students and students from underrepresented groups. The research outcomes of this work will be integrated into undergraduate and graduate curriculum and widely disseminated in the research community. The developed software computer-aided design tools will be released in the public domain.