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科学，不如说是一门艺术。它们的连续特性使它们在制造前难以验证其正确性，在制造后也难以测试其无故障性。这一事实导致设计错误，迫使昂贵的重新旋转（重复设计和制造过程），甚至更糟糕的是，有缺陷的零件被运送给客户。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，设计人员在大多数实现中使用更简单的0-1二进制数字假设，并且只在绝对必要时使用模拟组件。虽然这有一些优势，但它也带来了新的挑战，因为数字和模拟设计的传统验证和测试方法截然不同。该项目正试图解决这些挑战。特别地，该项目正在探索设计时验证以及新的内置自测和调优技术的集成。这种集成不仅可以共同增强设计的正确性和稳健性，从而全面保证设计质量，而且还可以验证具有内置数字辅助测试和调谐的自我修复模拟系统。这项工作的更广泛的影响是，它将使纳米级健壮的计算系统的设计成为可能，这对广泛的应用至关重要。此外，跨学科的探索将为解决具有实际意义的研究问题提供新的机会，并为学生提供良好的理论和应用基础的教育机会。pi将促进本科生和未被充分代表群体的学生参与研究。这项工作的研究成果将纳入本科和研究生课程，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.