Synthesis of high-performance analog circuits in astrx/oblx

Abstract- We present a new synthesis strategy that can auto-mate fully the path from an analog circuit topology and perfor-mance specifications to a sized circuit schematic. This strategy relies on asymptotic waveform evaluation to predict circuit per-formance and simulated annealing to solve a novel unconstrained optimization formulation of the circuit synthesis problem. We have implemented this strategy in a pair of tools called ASTRX and OBLX. To show the generality of our new approach, we have used this system to resynthesize essentially all the analog syn-thesis benchmarks published in the past decade; ASTWOBLX has resynthesized circuits in an afternoon that, for some prior approaches, had required months. To show the viability of the approach on difficult circuits, we have resynthesized a recently published (and patented), high-performance operational ampli-fier; ASTWOBLX achieved performance comparable to the expert manual design. And finally, to test the limits of the approach on industrial-sized problems, we have synthesized the component cells of a pipelined A/D converter; ASTWOBLX suc-cessfully generated cells 2-3 x more complex than those published previously. I