Design of mixed-signal systems-on-a-chip

The electronics industry is increasingly focused on the consumer marketplace, which requires low-cost high-volume products to be developed very rapidly. This, combined with advances in deep submicrometer technology have resulted in the ability and the need to put entire systems on a single chip. As more of the system is included on a single chip, it is increasingly likely that the chip will contain both analog and digital sections. Developing these mixed-signal (MS) systems-on-chip presents enormous challenges both to the designers of the chips and to the developers of the computer-adided design (CAD) systems that are used during the design process. This paper presents many of the issues that act to complicate the development of large single chip MS systems and how CAD systems are expected to develop to overcome these issues.