Modeling and simulating semiconductor devices using VHDL-AMS

The VHDL-AMS language supports the description of analog electronic circuits using Ordinary Differential Algebraic Equations (ODAEs), in addition to its support for describing discrete-event systems. For VHDL-AMS to be useful to the analog design community, efficient semiconductor device model must be available. This paper attempts to exploit the rich expressiveness of VHDL-AMS to describe semiconductor device models. The device models for diodes and transistors have been developed in VHDL-AMS and were validated using SEAMS, a mixed-signal simulator under development at the Distributed Processing Laboratory, University of Cincinnati