A Matching-based Placement and Routing System for Analog Design

Matching placement and routing is very important in layout design of high performance analog circuits. This paper presents a matching-based placement and routing system for custom layout design automation especially for analog or mixed-signal designs. The system explores various device-level matching-placement and matching-routing patterns to generate the most compact and high-quality layouts. Inputting a circuit netlist, the system automatically analyzes the circuit and extracts matching devices to form several matching device groups. Then, it selects the best matching placement and routing pattern for each device or device group to optimize and to meet the overall placement objectives and constraints. All patterns are user-configurable, stored in the pattern database, and portable from design to design. After the layout of each device and device group is generated and placed, the constraint-driven shape-based router is invoked to complete the layout. The overall system can easily generate high-quality layouts and greatly reduce the layout design time.