ABSTRACT
Circuit simulation has always been a crucial component of analog system design, even more so today. Ever-shrinking DSM technologies result in both analog and digital designs, proving to be less ideal. Indeed, the distinction between digital and analog design is blurred; from the digital standpoint, analog eects, often undesired, are becoming pervasive. Integrated radio frequency (RF) and communication system design involving both analog and digital components on the same substrate, now constitutes an important part of the semiconductor industry’s growth, while traditionally digital circuits (such as microprocessors) are now critically limited by analog eects such as delays, the need to synchronize internal busses, and so on. In short, advances in analog, RF, digital, and mixed-signal design over the last few years, combined with the eects of shrinking technologies, have spurred a renaissance in simulation. Old simulation problems have assumed renewed signicance and new simulation challenges-in some cases already addressed by novel and elegant algorithmic solutions-have arisen.
