SPICE (software)

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SPICE ( S imulation P rogram with I ntegrated C ircuit E Mphasis ) is a software for the simulation of analog, digital and mixed electrical circuits ( circuit simulation ).

Development history

The forerunner of SPICE was CANCER (Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits Excluding Radiation), which was developed by Ronald Rohrer's students as a class project. The name was an allusion to the anti-war climate in Berkeley at the time ( excluding radiation meant that it was not intended for work in the armaments program or on behalf of the Department of Defense, where radiation and radiation issues were considered). The main developer of SPICE was Larry Nagel (Laurence W. Nagel), who had already worked on CANCER as a student of Rohrer and with whom he did his doctorate under Donald Pederson (after Rohrer left Berkeley).

SPICE was originally developed at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) department of the University of California at Berkeley, written in Fortran and is now generally available in source code in version 3f5. A number of commercial and free offshoots are based on this version, which expand the original with additional functions, which in turn affects compatibility, which sometimes leads to considerable problems in finding a functioning simulation model.

SPICE1 was first presented to the public in 1973. In 1975 a much improved second version appeared. In 1989, Version 3 , written in C, was released by Thomas Quarles, a student of A. Richard Newton (who had worked on Spice 2).

function

The basic function of the circuit simulation with SPICE is the algorithmic finding of approximate solutions for the system-describing differential equations. Their relationship is determined by the circuit topology and transferred to the simulator by means of a network list that describes the components and their connections. The components are described by models, some of which are physically oriented, but can also be formulated in a completely abstract way. In the latter case, a subsystem is only described by inputs / outputs and linking equations, instead of consisting of individual components. This leads to faster and at the same time more exact simulation results, since the model inaccuracies of the individual components cannot add up. However, the internal behavior of the block then remains unknown.

User interfaces

A number of applications use the source code as the core for a graphical user interface . This has the advantage that the simulation can be created more intuitively:

literature

  • Karl H. Müller: Electronic circuits and systems. Simulate, analyze, optimize with SPICE , Vogel Verlag, 1990, ISBN 3-8023-0292-3
  • Steven M. Sandler, Charles E. Hymowitz: SPICE circuit handbook , McGraw-Hill Professional, 2006, ISBN 978-0-07-146857-2
  • Dietmar Ehrhardt, Jürgen Schulte: Simulating with PSPICE , Vieweg Verlag, 1992, ISBN 3-528-14921-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b http://www.ieee.li/pdf/viewgraphs/basics_simulation_technology.pdf
  2. ↑ a b http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1973/22871.html
  3. ↑ Larry Nagel on the development of Spice
  4. ↑ PSpice
  5. ^ LTspice
  6. ↑ TINA
  7. ↑ TINA-TI
  8. ↑ Multisim
  9. ↑ ngspice
  10. ↑ B2 Spice
  11. ↑ Felicitas PCBSim
  12. ↑ HSPICE ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.synopsys.com
  13. ↑ SystemVision
  14. ↑ Qucs