A knowledge-based approach to analog IC design

A design methodology of expert-system-assisted analog IC design is presented. The expert system provides advice on how to improve the design and the circuit simulator gives quantitative evaluation of the resultant circuit performance. The whole cycle repeats until the desired design goal has been achieved. To explore this design methodology, an expert system has been developed to assist the design of a CMOS operational amplifier. The implementation of the expert system and the associated experimental results are presented.>