Announce: Multi-threaded LTspice

FYI. --Mike

A major update for LTspice was released today. LTspice IV, formerly known as LTspice/SwitcherCAD III, features multi-threaded solvers to better utilize current multi-core processors. Also included are new SPARSE matrix solvers that deploy self-authoring code which is assembled and linked on the fly in order to approach the theoretical flop limit of current FPU's. Large circuits run ~3 times faster on quad core processors. Small circuits will run at about the same speed as the prior version of LTspice.

Developing a parallel processing version of SPICE has been a long standing challenge in circuit simulation that has been met with limited commercial success. LTspice IV reflects a review of the techniques that have been attempted and implements proprietary methods that allow it to efficiently parallelize tasks that require as little as 5µs to run single-threaded in proportionally less time with additional processing cores.

LTspice IV requires a CPU at least as recent as the P4 and Win2K, XP, Vista, x64 variants or Linux. Support for earlier CPU's or Win95/98/ME is only through use of LTspice/SwitcherCAD III which is still available but is not expected to be further maintained.

Reply to
Mike Engelhardt
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Opps, forgot to mention you can download from

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The version I posted was for the users' group at
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which knows that.

--Mike

Reply to
Mike Engelhardt

Very cool, Mike -- good job!

Reply to
Joel Koltner

Mike Engelhardt wrote: ...

Mike,

is Linux support still through Wine?

Thanks

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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Reply to
Uwe Bonnes

Uwe,

Yes, but now the help system even works. WINE doesn't handle .chm files correctly, but xchm does. So LTspice, when running under WINE, tries to out-smart WINE trying to out-smart Windows and execute the native Linux xchm from its X-window system installation.

--Mike

Reply to
Mike Engelhardt

Can I import PSpice schematics ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

You can run the PSpice generated net lists in LTspice. Probing is a hassle. It helps if you name nodes you want to probe.

--
Mark
Reply to
qrk

Mikey's post processor ain't the greatest either. If he'd fix that I'd switch, but customers like the nice plots that PSpice produces.

I'm simulating a 10-bit _potentiometric_ DAC right now (at the device level)... takes PSpice 20 seconds just to netlist... wonder how LTspice would handle it?

...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

When I go to work, I'll try one of my educational switcher supplies on a 2 and 8 core system. My first two tries brought up an issue in the new version 4, but Mike got that fixed in a snap last night. What I've done in the past, including PSpice, is use GnuPlot (graphing program). However, that's a lot of work to make plots. There are easier plot utilities out there, but I'm too lazy to learn another program.

-- Mark

Reply to
qrk

[snip]

Mark,

Keep us all posted on the results of your multi-core testing.

Thanks!

Maybe I can run mixed... use LTspice to solve big nasties, then re-run in PSpice for show ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Actually, help still does not work for me, any idea why?

LTSpice (4.00d) says "Unable to launch Xchm"

xchm is installed as /usr/bin/xchm.

I also tried creating a symlink /usr/bin/Xchm but still no joy.

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John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

The problem is that there's no organized way for a Windows app to call a Linux app from WINE. It's a shortcoming of WINE that the developers refused to address when I brought it up. The method in LTspice works under my Xubunto set up and for other people. Sorry you have no luck. I guess its all part of using GNU software with no warranty.

--Mike

Reply to
Mike Engelhardt

Strange, I would expect my setup to be very similar. My wine installation does date from many years ago (although regularly updated), perhaps something is setup wrong.

Now now, no need for that - as if Windows comes with one? :) Wine does an amazing job normally, I find it better at running windows software than windows itself, most of the time!

And many thanks for LTSpice, and for thinking of linux users too.

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John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

John,

Yeah, well, the problems are (i) WINE can't properly render LTspice's .chm file and (ii) the WINE developers refused to and a function that would allow someone to port to WINE to work around such problems. Now, I'm not lawyer, but I didn't worry about it too much because I checked out the license and it said WINE was not fit for a particular purpose.

--Mike

Reply to
Mike Engelhardt

Oh well, no problem really - I can view the chm file directly with xchm (as you suggest in the help dialog). Hopefully the wine help viewer will improve at some point anyway.

--

John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

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