A Framework for Designing Reusable Analog Circuits

Recent analog design tools have started to allow designers to archivenot only the sized schematics but also some of the objectives thatthe circuit is trying to achieve. This paper first describes STAR(Schematic Tool for Analog Reuse), a system that captures designer'sknowledge as part of the archival circuit representation,and then describes how this system can be used to create portabledesign modules. Creating portable analog modules require morethan just the optimization criteria for the cell. It must also includethe constraints on the cellýs environment (for proper operation), andhow these constraints should scale with technology. Furthermore,the system must help the designer in the current task of creatingthe design, since it is rare that a designer thinks about creating IPfor someone else. We demonstrate the capability and utility of thissystem by examining the reuse of a phase-locked loop.