Ngspice
| Ngspice
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|---|---|
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| Basic data
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| Current version |
32.2 ( May 5, 2020 ) |
| operating system | Linux , Windows , macOS |
| programming language | C. |
| category | Simulation software |
| License | BSD license (free software) |
| German speaking | No |
| ngspice.sourceforge.net | |
Ngspice is free software for circuit simulation . It is the open source successor to Berkeley SPICE version 3, the ancestor of all circuit simulators. The project was started at the University of Rome by Paolo Nenzi. Today a small group of maintainers and users contribute to the ngspice project by providing new features, enhancements and bug fixes. Ngspice is part of the gEDA project and is used for simulation by the PCB development tool KiCad and some commercial providers.
Ngspice is based on three free software packages: Spice3f5, Xspice and Ciderlbl:
- SPICE is the origin of all electronic circuit simulators; its successors are widely used in electrical engineering.
- XSpice is an extension of Spice3 that contains additional code programmed in the C programming language
- Cider complements ngspice with a numerical component simulator. It connects the circuit simulator with the component simulator in order to increase the simulation accuracy, but at the expense of the simulation time. Important components can be described by their technological parameters with numerical models. Everyone else can use the original ngspice compact models.
Three types of network simulations can be used with ngspice:
- non-linear DC simulation
- non-linear transient processes
- linear alternating current simulation
The simulation of transient processes includes noise simulation . With the AC simulation there is the possibility of simulating small signal noise , pole zero positions and transfer functions .
Ngspice contains several components such as resistors, capacitor and coil, transmission lines and a growing number of semiconductor components such as diodes , transistors , MOSFET (both bulk and SOI ); MESFET , JFET and HFET .
New models can be added to the simulator.
- XSpice Codemodel Interface: This interface helps the modeling process by simplifying the access to the internal structure of the simulator.
- ADMS Verilog Model Compiler . The ADMS Verilog Model Compiler generates code in C from Verilog-A model descriptions for integration into ngspice
- Models in Spice format in C. ngspice is an open source project: New models can be linked to the source files and compiled.
Ngspice supports parameterized netlists. Parameterized macro models, which are often published by semiconductor manufacturers, can be imported as they are. The old Spice2 netlists that contain polynominal sources are parsed correctly. Ngspice has an internal scripting language to facilitate complex simulations.
Web links
- ↑ Release 32.2 . May 5, 2020 (accessed May 29, 2020).