so I m slowly trying to learn `magic` but I ve been busy and

Question

so I m slowly trying to learn `magic` but I ve been busy and I haven t even got a simple inverter working yet naturally it got me thinking whether there any analog design paradigms in which one doesn t do the layout by hand Is there any reason not to lay out an analog design using simulated annealing SA based tools similar to the way digital ones are laid out I reckon a SA tool could for example be smart enough to minimize the wire length of nets marked critical by the designer etc I realize the noise of such a circuit might be somewhat higher than a handcrafted one but sometimes the design time matters also does anyone have anything to recommend or other thoughts along these lines or is there a good reason to disrecommend such an approach while searching this I found this interesting tidbit on SE <https electronics stackexchange com a 60961> it doesn t mention noise levels but since they were customizing only the via layer they must have had additional noise from extra tracks and potential interconnection points too

Morris Frazier · Answer

found this paper since I posted <https dl acm org doi pdf 10 1145 2717764 2717781> while I don t fully understand the given rationale at this time it does appear to be a hard problem

SUMANTO KAR · Answer

Thanks < Morris Frazier> there are research in progress How would it automatically provide device parameters

Luis Henrique Rodovalho · Answer

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Luis Henrique Rodovalho · Answer

Luis Henrique Rodovalho · Answer

Magic is a clumsy tool as it has a clumsy interface and it is hard to learn because it is paradigm is very different from the commercial tools But it has very good unexplored advantages DRC and extraction is ultra fast and it works in my jurassic laptop Everything can be done with TCL scripts which is much easier than pcell design in commercial tools

Thomas Pluck · Answer

Analog layout automation has a couple of open source tools where your mileage may vary 1 BAG3 2 Laygo2 3 ALIGN But it is ongoing research and there are a few different approaches for instance in this survey article there are many techniques listed these do include simulated annealing FPAAs have been around since the 80s but never really achieved commercial viability and are still a work in progress although you can buy a pretty simple ones I know Hasler at Georgia Tech is pushing hard to have these adopted and has released some open source tool to interact with her own SoC FPAA