Title :
Trustworthy Genetic Programming-Based Synthesis of Analog Circuit Topologies Using Hierarchical Domain-Specific Building Blocks
Author :
McConaghy, Trent ; Palmers, Pieter ; Steyaert, Michiel ; Gielen, Georges G E
Author_Institution :
Katholieke Univ. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Abstract :
This paper presents MOJITO, a system that performs structural synthesis of analog circuits, returning designs that are trustworthy by construction. The search space is defined by a set of expert-specified, trusted, hierarchically-organized analog building blocks, which are organized as a parameterized context-free grammar. The search algorithm is a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm that uses an age-layered population structure to balance exploration versus exploitation. It is validated with experiments to search across >;100 000 different one-stage and two-stage opamp topologies, returning human-competitive results. The runtime is orders of magnitude faster than open-ended systems, and unlike the other evolutionary algorithm approaches, the resulting circuits are trustworthy by construction. The approach generalizes to other problem domains which have accumulated structural domain knowledge, such as robotic structures, car assemblies, and modeling biological systems.
Keywords :
analogue integrated circuits; circuit optimisation; context-free grammars; genetic algorithms; integrated circuit design; network topology; operational amplifiers; search problems; MOJITO; age layered population structure; analog circuit topology; car assembly; hierarchical domain specific building block; human competitive result; modeling biological system; multiobjective evolutionary algorithm; open ended system; parameterized context free grammar; robotic structure; search space; trustworthy genetic programming based synthesis; two-stage opamp topology; Analog circuits; Design automation; Grammar; Integrated circuit modeling; Semiconductor process modeling; Solid modeling; Topology; Analog; design automation; evolutionary algorithm (EA); integrated circuit (IC); multiobjective optimization;
Journal_Title :
Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TEVC.2010.2093581