Contract-based system-level composition of analog circuits

Efficient system-level design is increasingly relying on hierarchical design-space exploration, as well as compositional methods, to shorten time-to-market, leverage design re-use, and achieve optimal performances. However, in analog electronic systems, circuit behaviors are so tightly dependent on their interface conditions that accurate system performance estimations based on characterizations of individual stand-alone circuits is a hard task. Since there is no general solution to this problem, analog system integration has traditionally used ad-hoc solutions heavily dependent on designers' experience. In this paper, we build upon the analog platform-based design methodology by exploiting contracts to enforce correct-by-construction system-level composition. Contracts intuitively capture the thought process of a designer, who aims at guaranteeing circuit performance only under specific assumptions (e.g. loading and dynamic range) on the interface properties. Our approach allows...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Xuening Sun, Pierluigi Nuzzo, Chang-Ching Wu, Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
• Keywords: Analog Platform-based Design, Correct-by-construction System-level Composition, DAC 2009, Design Automation, Efficient System-level Design