Integrated circuit performance optimization with simulated annealing algorithm and SPICE-PAC circuit simulator

The circuit design problem consists in determining acceptable parameter values (resistors, capacitors, transistor geometries...) which allow the circuit to meet various user given operational criteria (DC consumption, AC bandwidth, transient rise times, etc). This task is equivalent to a multidimensional and/or multi objective optimization problem: n-variables functions have to be minimized in an hyper rectangular domain; equality and/or inequality constraints can be eventually specified. We propose an efficient algorithm, based on the repeated application of SIMULATED ANNEALING to a certain number of p-variables sub problems, with p