A major component in the process of design is synthesis, the determination of the parameters of the parts of a network given desiderata for the behavior of the network as a whole. Traditional automated synthesis techniques are either restricted to small, precisely defined classes of circuit functions for which exact mathematical methods exist or they depend upon numerical optimization methods in which it is difficult to determine the basis for any of the answers generated and their relations to the design desiderata and constraints. We are developing a symbolic computer-aided design tool, SYN, which can be of assistance to an engineer in the synthesis of a large class of circuits. The symbolic methods produce solutions which are clear and insightful. The dependence of each parameter on the individual design desiderata and circuit constraints can be easily traced.
