Analog Design Vs Digital Design
Analog design deals with the management of continuous varying electrical signals. Basically, filters and amplifiers aid in designing the best signal characteristics. In integrated circuit (IC) design, analog design focuses on the circuits created to operate in and optimized for continuous time-domain behavior.
In this context, people mostly think that it is composed of complex microprocessors.
These circuits use digital design techniques that propagate discrete values, particularly 0s and 1s. However, utilizing this model of propagating 0s and 1s simplifies the analysis of big networks.
Therefore, analog circuit design is the foundation of designing digital circuits since the actual devices in any circuit responds to continuously varying stimulus. The objectives of analog design are typically amplification, filtering, and signal fidelity.
Significance of analog design
Analog basically forms the foundation for all integrated circuit designs. That is because all basic devices in an IC respond to continuous time stimulus. The modern IC technology has many design challenges.
There are significant differences in the manufacturing process for advanced technology nodes. Likewise, there are significant differences in the actual operation of a great number of devices in advanced ICs.
These differences are the changes in the operating temperature, operating voltage, and performance. Devices with one IC can experience signal distortions brought about by densely packed devices within the silicon substrate, package, and board.
The analog design should compensate for these effects in order to ensure the basic qualities of consistency, fidelity/precision, and performance. Reliability analysis and signal integrity analysis are useful in moderating these effects.
- Consistency – This ensures that voltages are at one of the reference levels of 0 and 1. The analog design ensures that these conditions are met.
- Fidelity/precision – There are lots of analog designs that form the foundation for circuits to detect the external conditions of an IC, such as air pressure, ambient temperature, light, and motion. With an analog circuit performing accurate sensing, guarantees excellent fidelity and precision.
- Performance – There are 2 basic forms of performance which include speed and power. Analog ensures both power and speed to be within acceptable limits.
Analog design vs digital design
The difference between the 2 is the analysis of each design.
Analog design
The circuit stimulus in analog design is treated as a nonstop variable signal over time. It is modeled in frequency and time domains with attention on consistency, fidelity/precision, and performance of resulting waveforms.
Therefore, circuit variability must model and compensate accordingly in terms of manufacturing and design.
Digital design
The circuit stimulus in a digital design is like a series of discrete logic 0s and 1s over time. The devices in digital circuits must spend most of their time at either logic 0 or 1. A digital design will work well as long as the circuits processing the signals are consistent in their response to the logic levels. Analog design guarantees such qualities.
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