Previous efforts on reconfigurable analog circuits mostly focused on specialized analog circuits, produced through careful co-design, or on highly reconfigurable, but relatively resource inefficient, accelerators that implement analog compute paradigms. This work deals with an intermediate point in the design space: Specialized reconfigurable circuits for analog compute paradigms. This class of circuits requires new methodologies for performing co-design, as prior techniques are typically highly specialized to conventional circuit classes (e.g., filters, ADCs). In this context, we present Ark, a programming language for describing analog compute paradigms. Ark enables progressive incorporation of analog behaviors into computations, and deploys a validator and dynamical system compiler for verifying and simulating computations. We use Ark to codify the design space for three different exemplary circuit design problems, and demonstrate that Ark helps exploring design trade-offs and evaluating the impact of nonidealities to the computation.

翻译：先前关于可重构模拟电路的研究主要集中于两类：通过精心协同设计产生的专用模拟电路，或是实现模拟计算范式但资源效率较低且高度可重构的加速器。本研究探索设计空间中的中间点：面向模拟计算范式的专用可重构电路。这类电路需要全新的协同设计方法，因为现有技术通常高度专用于传统电路类别（如滤波器、模数转换器）。为此，我们提出Ark——一种描述模拟计算范式的编程语言。Ark能够渐进地将模拟行为融入计算过程，并通过验证器与动力系统编译器实现计算验证与仿真。我们运用Ark对三种典型电路设计问题的设计空间进行系统化描述，证明该工具可有效探索设计权衡，并评估非理想效应对计算结果的影响。