  The paper presents a new approach to automate the set-up of the design
equations of the manual design process. A hierarchical performance equation
library (HPEL) for analog op-amps is introduced. Based on the library and the
functional block recognition method in [1], analytical performance models for
various op-amp topologies are automatically instantiated. The method emulates
the manual design process reducing the equation set-up effort to seconds. The
method is primarily designed for operational amplifiers. It has been applied to
many different op-amp topologies. In this paper, we use the method to size
different op-amp topologies. Experimental results featuring four circuits, a
symmetrical op-amp with high PSRR, a telescopic op-amp, a complementary op-amp
and a folded-cascode op-amp with CMFB, are presented. HPEL makes the set-up of
design equations topology independent. This allows the integration of the HPEL
into a synthesis method featuring more than 1000 op-amp topologies [2].
