8 NOVEMBER 2024IS DESIGN REUSE A MYTH FOR ANALOG CIRCUITS?By Eric Young, Senior Analog IC Design Manager, Monolithic Power Systems [NASDAQ: MPWR]I have been invited to comment on electronic design automation (EDA). Although I have not contributed much innovation to this subject, I can say a few words as someone who has benefited from it during my long career as an analog designer. With just over 25 years of experience designing DC/DC power converters as well as custom and standard analog IC products, I have seen some revolutionary changes in the EDA toolset over the years. I have worked for various companies and am currently with Monolithic Power Systems (MPS), so I have certainly seen diverse approaches to design methods. From my perspective, the impetus behind the continued EDA development is its ever-improving design execution speed, in addition to achieving a high confidence of success in the resulting silicon. Despite these improvements -- including those in simulation engines, data visualization, and post-layout extraction of parasitic elements -- it seems there is always another upgrade on the horizon. An old proverb comes to my mind: `Everything is going digital, but the world is still analog.' The analog here is engineers, so perhaps what is driving continuous EDA development is this human element. A theme that dominates my work life is circuit reuse. It was even a subject in my interview before joining MPS: Why is it so difficult for those in the analog design community to reuse IP blocks? Caught off guard, I had no ready answer to describe the barriers to reuse; I was also hesitant to offer any definitive answer to the interviewer, as I knew nothing about the company's internal systems for IP tracking. I have continued to give this question thought as I learn about the design processes and legacy circuits at MPS.It is easy enough to answer that every experienced design engineer has their favorite bandgap (they do): some may prefer the use of MOSFETs, while a select few use bipolar. I have concluded that the answer is more fundamental, though, and these perennial struggles can be distilled to a few points: inadequate documentation leading to a poor understanding of function and less than ideal discipline with design hierarchy. Good grief -- it sounds like a situation one would find in software engineering. Eric YoungIN MYPINIONIN MYPINION
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