ELLA for analogue VLSI design

The use of functional models of low level analogue components has been shown to be viable in principle. The aim is to develop techniques to assist analogue designers to optimise their simulation strategy without needing to concentrate on convergence issues. This work will be helped by use of a version of ELLA (Verson 4) with timescaling and floating point numbers. A big increase in demand for mixed-mode simulation is expected because of requirements to integrate functionality on one chip and the greater availability of mixed-mode processing. High frequency effects, which come into increased prominence as feature sizes shrink, require similar simulation techniques. It is not expected that the ELLA functional simulation algorithm will be able to cope with all analogue situations. The overall aim is not to supplant SPICE; it is to be able to call upon different simulation algorithms, including SPICE, within a single simulation environment. >