Computational Prototyping Tools and Techniques

Integrated circuit fabrication facilities are now offering digital system designers the ability to integrate analog circuitry and micromachined devices, but such mixed-technology microsystems are extremely difficult to design because of the limited verification and optimization tools available. In particular, there are no generally effective techniques for automatically generating reduced-order system-level models from detailed simulation of the analog and micromachined blocks. Research over the past decade on automatic model-reduction has lead to enormous progress in strategies for linear problems, such as the electrical problems associated with interconnect and packaging, but these techniques have been difficult to extend to the nonlinear problems associated with analog circuits and micromachined devices.