A knowledge-based environment for the automated design of analog electronic circuits.

摘要

A computer aided design environment has been developed for design automation that is generally applicable to electronic design and specifically applicable to automated analog electronic circuit design. The design of analog electronic systems has traditionally been performed by human designers who have a great deal of knowledge about analog circuits and a facility for applying this knowledge. This environment uses artificial intelligence techniques to model the knowledge based approach that humans use by maintaining a store of analog design knowledge and searching that knowledge for a solution to a particular design problem. The knowledge base is implemented using frames. The search process uses knowledge and meta-knowledge to develop a composition that achieves the desired design goal.;The environment applies a search strategy to find an optimal design solution in an efficient amount of time. A set of measures of complexity for the knowledge base and the required search processes is developed. These measures are then applied to assess the extensibility of the proposed system. Storage and computational restrictions are identified. A prototype of the proposed system is constructed and evaluated. A prototype application SLADE (for System Level Analog Design Environment) implements an example analog design area designing filters based upon operational amplifiers and passive components. The prototype environment is constructed almost entirely with the Prolog language and is one of the largest software systems constructed in Prolog to date.