Before the emergence of Electronic Design Automation (EDA), designers had to manually complete the design and wiring of integrated circuits, because the complexity of so-called integrated circuits at that time was far less than it is now. The industry began to manufacture the adhesive tape of circuit photoelectric plotter by geometric method. By the mid-1970' s, developers tried to automate the whole design process, not just the mask sketch. Successfully developed the first circuit routing and layout tool. The design automation conference was founded in this period to promote the development of electronic design automation.
The next important stage of the development of electronic design automation is Cafre? Cafmid and Lin? Conway's paper Introduction to VLSI System published in 1980 is the symbol. This paper puts forward a new idea of chip design through programming language, which is of great significance. If this idea is realized, the complexity of chip design can be significantly improved. This is mainly because the performance of tools used for logic simulation and functional verification of integrated circuits has been greatly improved. With the development of computer simulation technology, the design project can be simulated before the actual hardware circuit is built, which reduces the requirements of chip wiring layout for manual design and the software error rate is also decreasing. Today, although the language and tools used are still developing, the design of digital integrated circuits is still based on designing and verifying the expected behavior of circuits through programming languages and synthesizing low-level physical design with tools and software.
Starting from 198 1, electronic design automation gradually began to be commercialized. The first sales exhibition with the theme of electronic design automation was held at 1984 design automation conference. Gateway Design Automation introduced a hardware description language Verilog in 1986, which is the most popular advanced abstract design language. 1987, another hardware description language VHDL was created with the support of the US Department of Defense. Modern electronic design automation tools can identify and read different types of hardware descriptions. According to these language specifications, various simulation systems are rapidly introduced, so that designers can directly simulate the designed chips. Later, the development of technology focused more on logical synthesis.
At present, the design of digital integrated circuits is relatively modular (see integrated circuit design, design closure and design flow (EDA)). The manufacturing process of semiconductor devices needs standardized design description, and the description with high degree of abstraction will be compiled into the form of information unit. Designers do not need to consider the specific hardware technology of information units when designing logic. Using a specific integrated circuit manufacturing process to realize the hardware circuit, the information unit will realize the predetermined logic or other electronic functions. Most semiconductor hardware manufacturers will provide the components they manufacture? Component library? , and provide the corresponding standardized simulation model. Compared with digital electronic design automation tools, most electronic design automation tools in analog systems are not modular', because the functions of analog circuits are more complex, the interaction between different parts is stronger, and the law of action is complex, and most electronic components are not so ideal. Verilog AMS is a hardware description language for analog electronic design. In addition, designers can use hardware verification language to complete the verification of the project. At present, the latest development trend is to integrate description language and verification language, and the typical example is SystemVerilog.
With the expansion of integrated circuits and the development of semiconductor technology, the importance of electronic design automation has increased dramatically. The users of these tools include the hardware technicians of the semiconductor device manufacturing center, whose job is to operate the semiconductor device manufacturing equipment and manage the whole workshop. Some companies whose main business is design will also use electronic design automation software to evaluate whether the manufacturing department can adapt to the new design tasks. Electronic design automation tools are also used to import designed functions into semi-custom programmable logic devices similar to field programmable logic gate arrays, or to produce fully customized application-specific integrated circuits.
The concept of EDA technology
EDA technology refers to the automatic design of electronic products based on computer, which combines the latest achievements of applied electronic technology, computer technology, information processing and intelligent technology.
Using EDA tools, electronic designers can design electronic systems from concepts, algorithms and protocols. A lot of work can be done by computer, and the whole process of electronic products from circuit design and performance analysis to ic layout or PCB layout can be automatically processed by computer.
App application
Now the concept or category of EDA is widely used. Including machinery, electronics, communications, aerospace, chemical industry, minerals, biology, medicine, military and other fields, EDA has been applied. At present, EDA technology has been widely used in major companies, enterprises and institutions and scientific research and teaching departments. For example, the process of aircraft manufacturing, from design, performance testing, characteristic analysis to flight simulation, may involve EDA technology. The EDA technology referred to in this paper is mainly aimed at electronic circuit design, PCB design and ic design.
EDA design can be divided into system level, circuit level and physical implementation level.
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