High-speed circuit design: CAD tools and computational challenges

Designers must pay careful attention to physical design details when designing high-speed circuits (/spl ges/1 GHz) because signal interactions become significant at high frequencies. Simulating these interactions is computationally demanding and requires the use of fast, efficient simulation algorithms and high-performance computers. Ensuring that these interactions do not degrade performance requires the designer to precisely control the physical layout of high-speed circuits. The authors discuss the computational challenge of simulating high-speed circuits and then presents the ACME CAD tool. ACME is a unified design tool that allows designers to precisely control physical placement of all components and interconnect through a structural entry style that closely resembles schematic capture. ACME also provides the support necessary to accurately model on-chip interconnect for high-speed circuits.<>