Automating Analog Constraint Extraction: From Heuristics to Learning: (Invited Paper)

Analog layout synthesis has recently received much attention to mitigate the increasing cost of manual layout efforts. To achieve the desired performance and design specifications, generating layout constraints is critical in fully automated netlist-to-GDSII analog layout flow. However, there is a big gap between automatic constraint extraction and constraint management in analog layout synthesis. This paper introduces the existing constraint types for analog layout synthesis and points out the recent research trends in automating analog constraint extraction. Specifically, the paper reviews the conventional graph heuristic methods such as graph similarity and the recent machine learning approach leveraging graph neural networks. It also discusses challenges and research opportunities.