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Did SPICE development cease around the turn of the century?

I was looking at some old Intusoft newsletters from 1997 this morning, and was impressed with how in-depth and useful they were. Oddly, though, if you go to Intusoft's web site, there's a lot of information that looks like it's pretty old, and the newsletter that once came out every 2-3 months now seldom comes out more than once a year.

Meanwhile there's PSpice, which had most significant new development stopped somewhere in the acquisition chain of MicroSim->ORCAD->Cadence.

I'm starting to get the impression that, other than LTSpice, there's very little new development going with SPICE simulators today. (Even Kevin Aylward of SuperSpice fame doesn't hang out here much anymore... :-) -- and SuperSpice definitely had its own small list of really neat, unique features.) I suppose they've become mature enough that there just aren't that many more low-level features to add other than an occasional new model, but a lot of them (including LTSpice) could sure benefit from higher-level features such as Smith chart displays, the ability to use S/X/Y/Z parameter, impedance probes, automatic loop gain plots, and so on -- features available in a few packages here or there, but not at all universally. (And sadly, given LTSpice's focus, I doubt they'll ever make it to there as well -- LTSpice's graphing abilities are quite spartan compared to any of the good commercial packages... although I'm not complaining, given that the cost is $0.00.)

Oh well.

I would be interested to hear from people who've used Intusoft's ICAP/4 -- especially how it compares to, e.g., PSpice.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner
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Both Cadence and Mentor have been systematically killing off the competition by buying them up and letting them die a slow death by leaches ;-)

Though Meta Software still hangs in there with HSpice.

Also many bigger semiconductor houses have their own proprietary simulators, though they almost always have crap for post-processing.

I tried ICAP/4 long ago. I wasn't impressed. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed
Reply to
Jim Thompson

d was

u go to

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mes

ped

Aylward

Spice

suppose

vel

bes,

ges

focus,

ties

ough

=A0-- =A0

People should bow towards Milpitas five times a day for the amount of free software LTC has provided. Don't forget you are getting schematic capture from Linear, not just spice. Not only did a walk five miles to school in the snow, but I had to generate my own spice netlist by hand back in the day!

You can try NGSpice if you run linux.

formatting link

Reply to
miso

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:23:44 -0800 (PST), " snipped-for-privacy@sushi.com" wrote: [snip]

Same here. For two years, then I got a car.

I did that for _many_ years... draw schematics with pencil and paper, number nodes, write netlist, run with Berkeley Spice 2G6 on a VAX ;-)

Even did that on DOS for awhile.

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed
Reply to
Jim Thompson

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Perhaps they could eventually at least agree on an output format, so that post-processing tools could be universal.

Darn. Too bad -- it looks pretty good on paper.

Here's an interesting 2004 reminiscence from Nagel himself on SPICE:

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---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

I find it amusing that there were people who refused to believe that Mike Engelhardt single-handedly wrote the thing!

-->

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Cool, thanks for the link.

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Koltner

..

I compiled mine, but you may want to check if your linux distribution has ngspice in a repository. For those not familiar with linux repositories, think of it as the app store except it is free.

If you see cyngwin suggested, stay far far away. You could try virtualbox if you have a lot of ram.

Reply to
miso

"Leach" is a verb.

Hope This Helps! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

Another simulation program currently in development is "Gnucap", the progeny of Al Davis. It's hobbled by some incompatibility with current Spice packages, but is supposed to have some interesting capabilities. It's freely available on Linux {don't know about WinX}

Reply to
cassiope

Ignorance is NOT a virtue. ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

formatting link
| 1962 |

Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Neither is living in a leachfield, but some people seem to thrive in them.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid? on it, because it's
Teflon coated.
Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

And both ways were uphill :-)

< ... but I had to generate my own spice netlist by hand

I used to type in most of my netlists but that was because I had grown used to it. Like driving a stick-shift car. Even in 1989 Orcad-SDT could spit out a netlist that SPICE ate without belching. I just didn't do it very often. Main reason was that sims back then had to be small or they'd run all night on the old 386-machine.

[...] 
--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

Well, it seems I'm equally hated by Thompson, Terrell, and Sloman.

I couldn't be more proud!!

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

and was

you go to

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ery

in Aylward

perSpice

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-level

as

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spice netlist by hand

I know you do boards rather than chips, but don't you need the spice netlist for layout verification?

Reply to
miso

was

to

pretty

Aylward

SuperSpice

suppose

probes,

focus,

abilities

although

No, layout uses the netlist from my CAD. In whatever format the layouter needs it, for example if I use the layouter I network with it's PADS.

I use LTSpice since it's so much faster but that does have a downside: It is easy to make a mistake when transcribing a schematic from LTSpice to CAD where it becomes a portion of a larger schematic. There is no way to do that electronically, must be done by hand.

Some day when there is time (as if that's ever going to happen ...) I'd like to figure out a way to use my CAD as a frontend for LTSpice. IOW feed it my schematics instead of using the LTSpice schematic editor. For chips that might not be possible though because other than maybe some open source varieties CAD software is rather restrictive in the way part attributes can be arranged and netlisted. Scripting may be a method but a rather cumbersome one.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
Reply to
Joerg

was

go to

pretty

comes

stopped

Aylward

SuperSpice

suppose

low-level

probes,

packages

focus,

abilities

although

--

It's easy. There's no need to have a schematic in LTspice. I'm using LTspice pretty regularly with PSpice as the schematic capture.

I just pass the .CIR and .NET files to LTspice, with some minor edits like...

.PROBE becomes .SAVE

The LTspice post-processor still sucks for presentations, but engineering answers are much faster. Once I reach a conclusion, I use PSpice to create the presentation-grade graphics.

It's easy for me since I used text input for years on a VAX (and in DOS) before PSpice came along. ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

formatting link
| 1962 |

Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Thought it was a blood sucking grub ;)

Grant.

Reply to
Grant

and was

go to

pretty

comes

stopped

Aylward

SuperSpice

suppose

low-level

probes,

packages

focus,

abilities

although

--

Naughty. That breaks LT's license agreement--you're allowed to use it for anything except chip design.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Rich was pointing out a spelling error. Shortly he'll be going after punctuation, so everyone put on your foil beanies.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

email: hobbs (atsign) electrooptical (period) net
http://electrooptical.net
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

Nonsense...

"You are granted a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable, royalty-free right solely to evaluate LTC products and also to perform GENERAL CIRCUIT SIMULATION." | | "This program is specifically not licensed for use by semiconductor manufacturers in the PROMOTION, DEMONSTRATION OR SALE of their products. Specific permission must be obtained from Linear Technology for the use of LTspice for these applications."

I'm not using LTspice for the PROMOTION, DEMONSTRATION OR SALE of my chip designs. I wouldn't publish from LTspice output because it's UGLY, and doesn't lend itself to adding attractive explanatory annotations :-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |

      Remember: Once you go over the hill, you pick up speed
Reply to
Jim Thompson

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