Analog Circuit Transfer Method Across Technology Nodes via Transistor Behavior
Haochang Zhi, Jintao Li, Yun Li, Weiwei Shan · 2025
In the post-Moore era, chips integrate multiple technology node chiplets, necessitating repeated implementations of the same circuit topology across nodes, highlighting the need for technology-independent circuit representation. We use a four-parameter vector---gm, ft, VDS, and ΔVGS-to represent the behavior of each transistor, called the transistor behavioral vector (TBV). The TBVs are vertically concatenated to form the transistor behavioral circuit representation (TBCR) matrix, which precisely reflects the circuit's performance and provides a technology-independent representation. Furthermore, we propose a transistor behavioral model (TBM) to convert the TBV into the corresponding sizing. Finally, we propose a method to transfer analog circuits between different technology nodes using TBM (TNT), translating the modifications in the process parameters into the corresponding adjustments in ΔVGS. The experimental results show that for a single transistor, the mapping accuracy from TBV to simulation result was reached 99%. Multiple amplifiers were transferred from 180nm to 22nm technology, compared to the conventional transfer method based on gm/id, our transfer method based on TBCR achieved a success rate of up to 5× higher, along with additional performance improvements from the scaling down.