A Hierarchical Performance Equation Library for Basic Op-Amp Design

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical performance equation library (HPEL) that automates the setup of design equations for basic op-amps, enabling topology-independent analysis and sizing.

Contribution

The paper presents a comprehensive HPEL that automates performance modeling and sizing of op-amps, independent of their topology, enhancing analog design automation.

Findings

Successfully sized different op-amp topologies using HPEL.

Integrated HPEL into a structural synthesis method with thousands of topologies.

Demonstrated the approach on four circuit examples.

Abstract

The paper presents a new approach to automate the set-up of the design equations of the manual analog design process. Its main contribution is a comprehensive hierarchical performance equation library (HPEL) for op-amps. The HPEL makes the set-up of design equations independent of the topology. Based on the library and the functional block recognition method in [1], analytical performance models for various op-amp topologies are automatically instantiated. The method is currently designed for basic op-amps. In this paper, we use the method to size different op-amp topologies. Experimental results featuring four circuits are presented. The HPEL has also been integrated into a structural synthesis method featuring several thousand op-amp topologies [2].