ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses custom design flow aspects, like the treatment of layout influences, or intellectual property (IP) creation and management. It discusses design environment aspects and how to arrange all techniques for an assisted, constraint-aware, semi-automated flow, starting with a target datasheet and ending up in an optimized circuit with layout that is “ready-for-production.” Classical custom design environments are centered around schematic, simulation setup, and plotting tools. IP is quite a general term, so an IP tool can be almost everything. Direct circuit reuse is often difficult, because circuits are complex and technology dependent; e.g., for going down in supply voltage, significant circuit modifications are often required. Analog design is never technology-independent; at best, we can get support for technology migration and for design methods based on few key characteristics.
