Tomorrow's analog: just dead or just different?

ABSTRACT

This panel discusses the following topics. With the ongoing trend towards more and more digitization in applications ranging from multimedia to telecommunications, there is a big debate about whether there will remain a need for analog circuits in scaled technologies. Analog circuits do not seem to take advantage of nanometer CMOS; rather they suffer from it. So if the question is asked "Will analog scale?", you get conflicting opinions. One camp argues for an almost-all-digital future: analog/RF content should be limited, because it's difficult, expensive, risky, and can be done with DSP. The opposing camp counters that some critical circuits simply do not want (or need) to scale, and analog is only "risky" when you let digital designers do it. So, what is the future role of analog circuits in scaled CMOS, and can analog EDA tools help in this .

REFERENCES

• 1: "International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2005," http://public.itrs.net.
• 2: Georges Gielen , Wim Dehaene , Phillip Christie , Dieter Draxelmayr , Edmond Janssens , Karen Maex , Ted Vucurevich, Analog and Digital Circuit Design in 65 nm CMOS: End of the Road?, Proceedings of the conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe, p.36-42, March 07-11, 2005 [doi>10.1109/DATE.2005.64]
• 3: G. Gielen, R. Rutenbar, "Computer-aided design of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 88, No. 12, pp. 1825--1854, December 2000.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.2 Design Aids

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design

Keywords:
RF design, analog CAD tools, analog design, analog design methodologies, mixed-signal design