abstract = "This paper investigates the application of genetic
programming to problems in industrial analog
computer-aided design (CAD). One CAD subdomain,
analogue structural synthesis, is an often-cited
success within the genetic programming (GP) literature,
yet industrial use remains elusive. We examine why this
is, by drawing upon our own experiences in bringing
analogue CAD tools into industrial use. In sum,
GP-synthesised designs need to be more robust in very
specific ways. When robustness is considered, a GP
methodology of today on a reasonable circuit problem
would take 150 years on a 1,000-node 1-GHz cluster.
Moore's Law cannot help either, because the problem
itself is 'Anti-Mooreware' -- it becomes more difficult
as Moore's Law progresses. However, we believe the
problem is still approachable with GP; it will just
take a significant amount of 'algorithm
engineering'.
We go on to describe the recent application of GP to
two other analogue CAD subdomains: symbolic modelling
and behavioural modeling. In contrast to structural
synthesis, they are easier from a GP perspective, but
are already at a level such that they can be exploited
in industry. Not only is GP the only approach that
gives interpretable SPICE-accurate nonlinear models, it
turns out to outperform nine other popular blackbox
approaches in a set of six circuit modeling problems.",