Design of mixed-signal systems-on-a-chip

The electronics industry is increasingly focused on the consumer marketplace, which requires low-cost high-volume products to be developed very rapidly. This, combined with advances in deep submicrometer technology have resulted in the ability and the need to put entire systems on a single chip. As more of the system is included on a single chip, it is increasingly likely that the chip will contain both analog and digital sections. Developing these mixed-signal (MS) systems-on-chip presents enormous challenges both to the designers of the chips and to the developers of the computer-adided design (CAD) systems that are used during the design process. This paper presents many of the issues that act to complicate the development of large single-chip MS systems and how CAD systems are expected to develop to overcome these issues.