CODAC-a characterization system for digital and analog circuits

This paper describes CODAC, a CAD tool for characterization and analysis of analog and digital circuits. It is based primarily on the industry standard electrical simulator, SPICE. CODAC provides a powerful C like language for specifying the characterization problem. In addition to providing an extensive library of built-in analysis functions it also supports a procedural interface that facilitates the definition of customized analysis functions. A capability to distribute in parallel the large number of simulation runs for an extensive circuit analysis (e.g. Monte Carlo analysis) is provided which significantly reduces overall cycle time. CODAC is being successfully used for circuit analysis and as a part of analog and digital library development flow at Texas Instruments.