ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses symbolic analysis as a computer-aided design tool and its application to integrated circuit design. Modern symbolic analysis is mainly based on either a topological approach or a modified nodal analysis (MNA) approach. The basic topological (graph-based) methodologies are discussed in [Rod08] because the methods are part of traditional symbolic analysis techniques. The methodology addressed in the chapter is based on the concept of MNA [Ho75] as it applies to symbolic analysis. The chapter presents the most common analysis methods used in circuit simulators: a modification of nodal analysis as used in the numeric circuit simulators SPICE2 [Nag75], and SLIC [Idl71]; hybrid analysis [Chu75] is used in the numeric simulators ASTAP [Wee73] and ECAP2 [Bra71]; and sparse tableau analysis [Hac71]. The entire analysis is performed in the frequency domain with the aid of the complex frequency variable. The Laplace transform representation of the value of any circuit element is therefore used in the formulation.
