Hierarchical approach to exact symbolic analysis of large analog circuits

This paper proposes a novel approach to the exact symbolic analysis of very large analog circuits. The new method is based on determinant decision diagrams (DDDs) representing symbolic product terms. But instead of constructing DDD graphs directly from a flat circuit matrix, the new method constructs DDD graphs in a hierarchical way based on hierarchically defined circuit structures. The resulting algorithm can analyze much larger analog circuits exactly than before. The authors show that exact symbolic expressions of a circuit are cancellation-free expressions when the circuit is analyzed hierarchically. With this, the authors propose a novel symbolic decancellation process, which essentially leads to the hierarchical DDD graph constructions. The new algorithm partially avoids the exponential DDD construction time by employing more efficient DDD graph operations during the hierarchical construction. The experimental results show that very large analog circuits, which cannot be analyzed exactly before like μA725 and other unstructured circuits up to 100 nodes, can be analyzed by the new approach for the first time. The new approach significantly improves the exact symbolic capacity and promises huge potentials for the applications of exact symbolic analysis.