Analog circuit synthesis: a search for the Holy Grail?

Hardware design is a process of refining an idea from a highly abstract form to a concrete, physical implementation. Along the way, a design is continually transformed from a given state of abstraction to another less abstract representation, finally ending with physical design. Such transformations are achieved through synthesis - a standard method in digital design. Analog circuits, however, are still designed in practice in a bottom-up, manual style. This paper summarises the results of past research in analog synthesis and outlines a refinement-centric methodology for analog circuit synthesis