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NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 20130000277: A Framework for R...
by NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
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Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design for
space applications involves multiple challenges of
maximizing performance, minimizing power and ensuring
reliable operation in extreme environments. This is a
complex multidimensional optimization problem which must
be solved early in the development cycle of a system due
to the time required for testing and qualification
severely limiting opportunities to modify and iterate.
Manual design techniques which generally involve
simulation at one or a small number of corners with a
very limited set of simultaneously variable parameters in
order to make the problem tractable are inefficient and
not guaranteed to achieve the best possible results
within the performance envelope defined by the process
and environmental requirements. What is required is a
means to automate design parameter variation, allow the
designer to specify operational constraints and
performance goals, and to analyze the results in a way
which facilitates identifying the tradeoffs defining the
performance envelope over the full set of process and
environmental corner cases. The system developed by the
Mixed Signal ASIC Group (MSAG) at the Goddard Space
Flight Center is implemented as framework of software
modules, templates and function libraries. It integrates
CAD tools and a mathematical computing environment, and
can be customized for new circuit designs with only a
modest amount of effort as most common tasks are already
encapsulated. Customization is required for simulation
test benches to determine performance metrics and for
cost function computation. Templates provide a starting
point for both while toolbox functions minimize the code
required. Once a test bench has been coded to optimize a
particular circuit, it is also used to verify the final
design. The combination of test bench and cost function
can then serve as a template for similar circuits or be
re-used to migrate the design to different processes by
re-running it with the new process specific device
models. The system has been used in the design of time to
digital converters for laser ranging and time-of-flight
mass spectrometry to optimize analog, mixed signal and
digital circuits such as charge sensitive amplifiers,
comparators, delay elements, radiation tolerant dual
interlocked (DICE) flip-flops and two of three voter
gates.
Date Published: 2016-11-13 11:53:15
Identifier: NASA_NTRS_Archive_20130000277
Item Size: 531562
Language: english
Media Type: texts
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