CACE Study: Open source analog and mixed-signal design flow
summary
CACE (Circuit Automatic Characterization Engine) is an open source Python flow (available via pip install cace) that verifies analog/mixed‑signal designs using xschem, ngspice, klayout and magic, running corner sweeps and Monte Carlo and producing pass/fail metrics and an HTML datasheet. It clones public repos, extracts schematic and RC layout netlists, runs multi‑threaded simulations, postprocesses with Python/Octave, and compares results to spec limits. In a recent challenge it handled 21 block specs, 40 proposals, 15 layouts ready and 12 of those used CACE.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:47CACE origins
- 3:52Analog MPW problems
- 5:37CACE open source
- 6:20CACE tool overview
- 9:35Designer requirements
- 10:40Automated verification
- 13:09Test bench setup
- 15:17Simulation results
- 17:29Chipala 2024 challenge
- 19:34CACE benefits
- 20:17Tiny tape-out raffle
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