Analog circuit synthesis for large, realistic cells: designing a pipelined A/D converter with ASTRX/OBLX

ASTRX/OBLX are a pair of synthesis tools that together can size high-performance analog circuit topologies to meet user supplied performance constraints. Previous approaches to cell synthesis have focused almost exclusively on small linear textbook circuits, e.g. classical op amps with 5-10 devices. In contrast, in this paper we describe our successful experiences with fully automatic synthesis of the largest analog cells automatically created to date. We design a comparator and a switched capacitor gain cell (82 devices in total), and use them to complete a realistic pipelined A/D converter