CIF: Small: Towards Practical Validation Of Nonlinear Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits

模拟组件在我们的移动、手持设备、健康监测、汽车、GPS和其他嵌入式设备中越来越普遍(例如，在iPhone5中，28个组件中有28个是模拟/混合信号类型)。使用模拟设备而不是纯数字设备的好处是，它们在设计空间中提供了低功耗、低成本和高参数灵活性。然而，设计的灵活性伴随着对这些系统的验证/确认的复杂性的权衡。虽然验证数字设计的正确性是一个困难的问题，但模拟系统在行为上引入了超过数字验证的复杂性。因此，随着模拟元件的使用越来越多，确保这些系统的正确性对它们的设计过程至关重要。由于前几代设备中的模拟元件都是孤立的单个元件，因此在这方面的研究一直是空白。该项目试图提供一种方法，以提供对当前模拟验证实践的巨大飞跃，并有可能弥合模拟设计和设计自动化工具之间的差距，为其他模拟验证方法的进一步发展铺平道路。伊利诺伊大学和其他地方的本科生和研究生的模拟和混合信号验证课程材料将作为提案的一部分进行开发。MyTri是一家为计算机领域的女性提供的专业社交门户网站，PI也将利用NSF的资金进一步开发该网站。从技术角度来看，由于非线性行为、连续状态空间以及传统的手动验证方法，模拟和混合信号的设计比纯数字设计要复杂得多。在系统级集成的背景下，作为模拟电路验证的事实标准的蒙特卡罗模拟方法没有达到提供产生输入刺激、控制模拟类型、指定期望的约束或触发事件以及提供调试、诊断能力和评估测试覆盖的方法的预期目标。这项工作提出了一个具有上面列出的所有功能的验证环境。建议对基于随机树的搜索算法进行分析。这些算法可以是可控的，以实现不同的验证目标。拟议工作中解决的问题在计算上非常复杂，因此，这些问题的可伸缩解决方案也将是一个挑战。

Analog components are increasingly prevalent in our mobile, handheld, health monitoring, automotive, GPS and other embedded devices (e.g., in the iphone 5, twenty out of twenty eight components are of analog/mixed signal type). The benefit of using analog devices over purely digital devices is that they offer low power, low cost and high flexibility of parameters in the design space. However, the design flexibility comes with a tradeoff of complexity in the verification/validation of these systems. While verification of the correctness of a digital design is a hard problem, analog systems introduce complexity in behavior that surpasses digital verification. Hence, with the growing use of analog components, ensuring that these systems are correct is critical to their design process. Since analog components were isolated single components in previous generations of devices, there has been a void in the research in this area. This project attempts a methodology to provide a quantum leap over the current practices of analog validation and have the potential to bridge the gap between analog design and design automation tools, paving the way for other analog verification methodologies to evolve further. Course material on analog and mixed signal verification for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois and elsewhere will be developed as part of the proposal. MyTri, a professional networking portal for women in computing will be further developed by the PI with NSF funds as well. From a technical standpoint, the design of analog and mixed-signal are much more complicated than purely digital design, due to nonlinear behavior, continuous state spaces, as well as traditional methods of manual validation. In the context of system level integration, Monte Carlo simulations methods, the de facto standard for analog circuit validation, fall short of the intended goal of providing an ability to generate input stimulus, control the type of simulations, specify desired constraints or trigger events, as well as provide debugging, diagnosis capacity and a method to evaluate the test coverage. This work proposes a validation environment with all the capabilities listed above. The proposal is to analyze randomized tree based search algorithms. These algorithms can be made controllable to achieve different validation objectives. The problems addressed in the proposed work are computationally very complex, and thus, scalable solutions to these problems is a challenge that will also be addressed.