Who Will Design Tomorrow’s Analog Integrated Circuits: Humans Or Ai-based Synthesis?

Abstract:
Analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits are key in applications where electronics interface with the physical world. The design of analog circuits, however, is time consuming and prone to errors, often requiring multiple redesign cycles. The rebirth of AI and machine learning, and the recent rise of generative AI methods, on the other hand, create a whole new spectrum of techniques to automate this process. This invited talk will explore the high potential of using advanced machine learning (ML) techniques to automatically synthesize and lay out analog integrated circuits. What is hype and what will be feasible? Will we still need analog designers in the future and how will they operate?

Bio:
Georges G.E. Gielen received the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, in 1986 and 1990, respectively. Currently, he is Full Professor in the MICAS research division at the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) at KU Leuven. From 2013 until 2017 he served as Vice-Rector for the Group of Sciences, Engineering and Technology. In 2018 he was visiting professor at UC Berkeley and Stanford University. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) at KU Leuven.

His research interests are in the design of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits, and especially in analog and mixed-signal CAD tools and design automation, including modeling, simulation, optimization and synthesis as well as testing. He has graduated over 55 PhDs so far. He is a frequently invited speaker and serves/served as Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is coordinator/partner of several academic and industrial research projects in the above fields, including having awarded the ERC Advanced Grant AnalogCreate. He has (co-)authored 14 monograph books and more than 800 publications in edited books, international journals and conference proceedings. He is a 1997 Laureate of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, Literature and Arts in the discipline of Engineering. He is Fellow of the IEEE since 2002, and received the IEEE CAS Mac Van Valkenburg award in 2015, the IEEE CAS Charles Desoer award in 2020, as well as the EDAA Achievement Award in 2021. He is an elected member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium in the class of Technical Sciences, and of the Academia Europaea.