Practical Layout-Aware Analog/Mixed-Signal Design Automation with
  Bayesian Neural Networks
Ahmet F. Budak Keren Zhu David Z. Pan
The high simulation cost has been a bottleneck of practical
analog/mixed-signal design automation. Many learning-based algorithms require
thousands of simulated data points, which is impractical for expensive to
simulate circuits. We propose a learning-based algorithm that can be trained
using a small amount of data and, therefore, scalable to tasks with expensive
simulations. Our efficient algorithm solves the post-layout performance
optimization problem where simulations are known to be expensive. Our
comprehensive study also solves the schematic-level sizing problem. For
efficient optimization, we utilize Bayesian Neural Networks as a regression
model to approximate circuit performance. For layout-aware optimization, we
handle the problem as a multi-fidelity optimization problem and improve
efficiency by exploiting the correlations from cheaper evaluations. We present
three test cases to demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithms. Our tests
prove that the proposed approach is more efficient than conventional baselines
and state-of-the-art algorithms.