Acceleration for Efficient Automated Generation of Operational Amplifiers

Abstract

Operational amplifiers (Op-Amps) are critical to sensor systems because they enable precise, reliable, and flexible signal processing. Current automated Op-Amp generation methods suffer from extremely low efficiency because the time-consuming SPICE-in-the-loop sizing is normally involved as its inner loop. In this paper, we propose an efficiently automated Op-Amp generation tool using a hybrid sizing method, which combines the merits together from a deterministic optimization algorithm and differential evolution algorithm. Thus, it can not only quickly find a decent local optimum, but also eventually converge to a global optimum. This feature is well fit to be serving as an acute filter in the circuit structure evaluation flow to efficiently eliminate any undesirable circuit structures in advance of detailed sizing. Our experimental results demonstrate its superiority over traditional sizing approaches and show its efficacy in highly boosting the efficiency of automated Op-Amp structure generation.