Using Optimization to Find Design Trade-offs in Analog Amplifier Design

In this paper, we discuss an optimization-based approach for design space exploration of analog circuits, i.e., how some design parameters affect the circuit performance and cost. By this exploration the designer is guided to make judicious trade-offs among the design parameters. For the design space exploration, which is expensive in terms of computation time, we use an optimization-based approach that run concurrent optimization task on a network of workstations. The input to the optimization tool is a netlist describing the circuit and the performance specification. The appropriate cost functions are automatically generated from the netlist. As a design example, we have selected a simple folded-cascode operational transconductance amplifier, OTA, implemented in a standard 0.35-μm CMOS process. The tool is, however, capable to handle larger circuits.