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Plenary  Lecture

The advent of nanometer CMOS technologies brings many benefits but also many challenges to mixed-signal circuit design. Ever more complex systems can be integrated on a single die. Ever higher frequencies are available, allowing to continuously increase the circuit speed or to turn the speed margin in improved performance. Also fully reconfigurable mixed-signal circuits can easily be generated. The reduced supply voltage range on the other hand strains the achievable dynamic range. In addition, nanometer CMOS poses additional challenges due to increased variability and reliability problems. Both have to be addressed by the designer, either at IC design time or through calibration and reconfiguration at IC run time. The abundance of digital circuitry on chip provides a solution to break the power-speed-accuracy trade-off and  to generate digitally assisted analog circuits with high performance. This will be illustrated with several examples.

 Under the Patronage of  European Circuit Society (ECS)