Talk:SPICE

message: The brief text from the page XSPICE has now been merged to this article.  The XSPICE page has been changed to a simple redirect. DFH 08:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  XSPICE merged 

message: SPICE was released under what amounts to the BSD license (or Don Pederson's force of will, depending on how you look at it).  There's a line in the article (poorly placed) which asserts BSD is restrictive.  It's not gnu, and in many senses it's less restrictive than gnu.  Can we remove this line?  A note about licensing is probably appropriate, since SPICE was probably the first open source program, but the emphasis should be switched to point out how the nascent IC industry benefitted from a freely available open source circuit simulator.
66.69.212.211 15:10, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  restrictive license? 

message: I propose eliminating the links to commercial simulators.  This has gotten out of hand and has been flagged by Wikipedia as excessive and in need of cleanup.  To replace them, I think it would be sufficient to simply say, "There are many commercial circuit simulators, some of which are direct descendants of SPICE2," with a possible mention of PSPICE and HSPICE as being two of the earliest and most popular.  Steve, 66.69.212.211 14:13, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  External/commercial links 

message: SPICE has been referred to for many years as one of the first open source programs. The open source article mentions source code available to the general public with relaxed or nonexistent IP restrictions; as I remember, the SPICE license was essentially BSD, which is certainly one of the less restrictive.  However, now I can't find the original language in the source code or elsewhere, and the current software agreement is about as open as can be found.  I suggest the language in the article about restrictions and an acknowledgment clause can be removed.
YoungGeezer 05:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open source 

message: The CMC mainly exists to make it easy to port model parameters from one simulator to another. This requires standard models and standard model parameters. The reason this is important is primarly for fabless (or fab-lite) semiconductor companies, who need to take the model parameters given by the foundry and use them in various simulators.  While there are still syntax differences between the different simulators, a standard model will at least ensure that a given set of model parameters will produce a known result on each of the simulators (assuming the implementation follows the reference implementation faithfully, which is again somewhat iffy but at least there's a standard to use to beat on the implementations that deviate).
All that said, the CMC website mentions this obliquely through the first sentence in their vision statement: "Standardized compact models for all major technologies so that customer communication and efficiency can be enhanced."  "Customer communication" basically comes down to sets of model parameters to run into standard models.
As it turns out, the "standard interfaces" thing dropped out.  Eight or nine years ago a couple of standard interfaces were proposed, but neither caught on, because of their implicit assumptions about simulator architecture.  A better approach is being pursued now, using Verilog-AMS as an executable specification and a program like ADMS to translate the Verilog-AMS into simulator code (with some intervening steps and a bit of work).
So I'm reverting the change regarding the purpose of the CMC.
YoungGeezer 18:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the explanationBrews ohare 18:10, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compact model council purpose 

message: I undid this link because it didn't work Brews ohare (talk) 01:10, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vaccardi link does not work

message: There seems to be a toggling of the TI simulator reference from TISPICE to Tina-TI and back. The paragraph in question is about industrial circuit simulators.  TISPICE is a SPICE derivative which is written, supported and used in TI.  Tina-TI is a give-away for marketing purposes, was not written in TI, and as far as I know is not used (except by marketeers) in TI.  The proper reference for the paragraph is to TISPICE. YoungGeezer (talk) 14:14, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tina-TI? 

message: I (somewhat regretfully) removed the recently added list of 'alternative compact models'.  The article is about SPICE; the GEIA Compact Model Council and standard models is somewhat related, but I don't think the SPICE article is the correct place for a list of all possible compact models -- there are sooo many of them, everyone has their favorites, and most have only limited usage.  Perhaps the transistor models article would be a better place. YoungGeezer (talk) 19:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of compact models 

message: Perhaps there are complicated reasons for not doing so, but it seems that adding some reference to gnucap as an open source project largely inspired by the SPICE program family might be in order?  <gnucap_website>
71.197.225.209 (talk) 00:13, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Gnucap is to be commended for being an independent circuit simulation development and open source.    But, other than being a circuit simulator, it is about as unrelated to SPICE as is possible:  It did not originate at Berkeley, and as far as I know is not derived from SPICE (I think Al is somewhat proud that it is new and perhaps better code).  I'm interested in the SPICE article remaining focused on SPICE -- the article history shows that excessive links to commerical simulators were purged some time back and I'd just as soon not accumulate another mass of links to other simulators, open source or not.  There is a category for Electronic Circuit Simulators and separate articles on a number of simulators -- perhaps that would be the better route for mentioning gnucap... YoungGeezer (talk) 05:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  perhaps some discussion of gnucap could be added? 

message: After thinking about this for a week, I removed this citation.  For starters, it referenced an IC design textbook by a Boise State faculty member, posted from a Boise State IP address.  Looks bad, at minimum.  Secondly, the citation was added in proof of the assertion that simulation with SPICE is an industry-standard practice.  Probably every circuit-design-related textbook written in the last 25+ years mentions using SPICE -- perhaps one of the great classics might be mentioned (Gray & Meyer, Mead & Conway, Weste, etc.) but I'd really like to not see an accumulation of "cite my text too" cruft.  (And really, the canonical reference for the assertion is probably the IEEE Spectrum article on Don Pederson, if needed.)
YoungGeezer (talk) 23:54, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reversion of citation inserted by 132.178.10.11 

message: Thanks to bassplr19 for being bold in adding the model parameter tables, but I'd like to revert and discuss whether we should reproduce the SPICE manual here in this article. I think not. I think it would be better to add a link to the UCB archive. See WP:NOTAMANUAL Thanks Woz2 (talk) 14:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I heartily concur, an encyclopedia article is not a manual. It appeared bassplr19 got midway through the edit and thought better of it - and just as well, since the various MOSFET tables go forever.  The article has links to a manual, Berkeley pages and the standard models; best to leave it at that, I think... YoungGeezer (talk) 03:14, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reproduce chunks of the SPICE manual in this article? 

message: hej  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.58.167.33 (talk) 18:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  djo 

message: I removed the association of Multisim and XSPICE because the cited article contradicts the claim. The Multisim article says "Multisim is one of the few circuit design programs to employ the original Berkeley SPICE based software simulation" not XSPICE. BTW, the claim in the Multisim article is itself unsourced, but that's another can of wax... Woz2 (talk) 14:28, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multisim 

message: I've reverted the addition on Fast-SPICE, mainly because it detracts from the topic.  I'd encourage anyone interested in the topic to write an article about it and put a link in the SPICE entry. In particular, start with Hermann Gummel's MOTIS, some similar work at UC Berkeley, then to on to mention the current crop of commercial fast-SPICE programs: nanosim, hsim, ultrasim, etc. The only real relation to SPICE that any of these have is that they are not SPICE, and are often much faster but also often not very accurate. YoungGeezer (talk) 17:40, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fast-SPICE 

message: In the interest of not getting into the situation this article had in 2007, when it was flagged for excessive external/commercial links, I've removed a list of links to other simulators.  Since a list exists, the List of free electronics circuit simulators, and a category, :Category:Electronic circuit simulators already exist for this purpose, let's please use them and not clutter this article. YoungGeezer (talk) 18:11, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simulator links 

message: The contents of this list is somewhat mixed and does not always follow the two topics "Spice Version" and "Source code available".
Spice2 and Spice3:   o.k.
Cider:               o.k.
ngspice:             o.k.
Spice+:
This is a graphical user interface, but not Spice itself. Many others of this kind are available (kjwaves, GNU Spice GUI, gsim ...) .
tclspice:            o.k.
XSPICE:              o.k.
Spice Opus:
Free spice simulator. Some source code is available on code models, but no source code on the simulator itself.
PyOPUS:
An optimization framework with source code, but not Spice itself. Others are available (ASCO ...).
LTSpice:
Probably the most widely used free Spice simulator, but definitely no source code available.
Because I am a little bit biased, somebody else might take care of an update to this list.
James HV (talk) 09:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Versions with source code available 

message: Can someone explain this sentence? Is this comment about the use of a morbid acronym? Unless someone can clarify "a hint to Berkeley's liberalism of 1960s" it should be removed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.12.184.6 (talk) 21:07, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure. I added a citation in Larry Nagel's own words. Woz2 (talk) 22:49, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, neither Berkley or liberalism are discussed in the citation given. So I'm tagging it as having failed verification. 67.51.98.218 (talk) 04:17, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  In the cited talk Nagel says: "The name CANCER was a brash statement that this program never would simulate radiation and was not funded by the defense industry. It was developed at Berkeley in the sixties, remember!" I think that opposition to the defense industry within American liberalism are well established. I'm going to remove the tag if you don't mind. Markluffel (talk) 23:19, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Right before I read this, I found an article that specifically mentions radiation effects. If these programs are the predecessors to CANCER and SPICE, then the statement about not simulating radiation effects makes sense. Gah4 (talk) 07:55, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  CANCER was an acronym for "Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation," a hint to Berkeley's liberalism of 1960s 

message: Judging by this it appears it was just a user-contributed TI-92 program. I doubt it was the company's internal design/simulation software. JMP EAX (talk) 10:57, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, good grief. I worked at TI when SPICE2 came out. TISPICE was the internal version of SPICE2 and the group that did TISPICE had a tight relationship with Berkeley. The main people involved at that point were Robert Colon and Bert Epler; later Ping Yang joined TI and made some contributions (although he was actually in research rather than design automation); Lawrence Arledge and I believe Farid Najm came later to continue improvements to TISPICE. Lots of other sharp folks were involved. Google some of those names (e.g. Lawrence Arledge Texas Instruments) if you're disbelieving. YoungGeezer (talk) 17:50, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  TISPICE 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on SPICE. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20140706082430/http://www.analog.com/en/content/adisimpe/fca.html to http://www.analog.com/en/content/adisimpe/fca.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20060926034314/http://www.cs.sandia.gov/nacdm/talks/Nagal_Larry_NACDM2004.pdf to http://www.cs.sandia.gov/nacdm/talks/Nagal_Larry_NACDM2004.pdf
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on SPICE. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hey everyone, this is my first time on a talk page so excuse me if my etiquette is a little rough. I was on the SPICE page and realized that there is no information on coolSPICE, which is not too surprising because coolSPICE is a relatively newly developed version of SPICE circuit simulators. That being said, I think it is imperative that it be added to this page because the things that the coolSPICE simulator can do, no other SPICE simulator can. Basically, it is specially built for the simulation of cryogenic-temperature CMOS circuit modeling as well as wide bandgap semiconductor transistor modelingZossA (talk) 15:08, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I forgot to include some sources sorry. Here they are: http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/ntb/tech-briefs/software/19394 and http://coolcadelectronics.com/proj4.html
ZossA (talk) 15:10, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding a section on coolSPICE 

message: The main links in the box at the top right at the page all point to the same software which is NOT SPICE for electronics. Could someone fix this?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Polariseke (talk • contribs) 04:46, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: That should do it. We should keep an eye on the Wikidata page, in case the guy adds the links again. --Ajv39 (talk) 20:37, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The guy did add them again. He apparently had no clue what he'd done wrong. (It doesn't help that Wikidata's editing interface gives you no way that I can see to add an edit summary.) I've just cleaned up all the incorrect info in the Wikidata entry (an unrelated repository and Gentoo package and an incorrect claim that SPICE used C++), which were all caused by confusion with the SPICE remote-display system. I modified the Wikidata description to point out the confusion, added a more detailed explanation of the confusion to the item's Talk page, and also added a message to that Wikidata editor's talk page explaining what I had done and why his fixes were incorrect. Hopefully that will solve the problem. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 01:14, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, the problem should now be solved for good. Once that Wikidata editor learned that there were two different entities named SPICE, he created a new Wikidata item for the remote-display system and added a "different from" property to both items to indicate that they are distinct. I just sent him a thank-you response. :) So I don't think we'll have any more issues with that. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 20:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Main links to SPICE dubious 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Since AD bought linear technology and now owns/maintains LTSpice, some of the text on this page probably needs to be updated to reflect that Nrjank (talk) 04:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: AD bought LT 3 years ago, but every article hasn't been cleaned up to change this fact.  You don't need to post anything in talk sections, just change the company name, just like I did before posting a reply.  • Sbmeirow • Talk • 11:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  LTSpice now owned/maintained by Analog Devices 

message: SpiceOpus is free, but is not open source. There is some source code available from the SpiceOpus web site covering only the XSPICE code models, code that has be published elswhere as well. But there is no source code for the simulator core made available.
There is a very recent open source spice available, in that Stephen R. Whiteley has made his former commercial WRSpice open source (see http://wrcad.com).
Other companies based on Spice have ended their commercial activities as well and have made their programs freely available, but not open source: Spectrum Software with Microcap (http://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm), AnaSoft with SuperSpice (https://www.anasoft.co.uk/) as well as 5Spice (http://www.5spice.com/, only with limited features).
Thus it may be advisable to add, in addition to "Open Source" and "Commercial", a category "Free Spice Simulators" to reflect this quickly changing environment.
James HV (talk) 09:15, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Open Source 

message: I have removed this chapter, summarizing its previous content in a single sentence. In my view it does not make any sense to write a lengthy report on what SPICE cannot do (it fails to do many, many things indeed).
:I agree with this Constant314 (talk) 17:40, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of "Exclusion" chapter 

message: This chapter has been completely inconsistent with the SPICE wiki. Being only one of several simulation types, it does not make sense to describe one method only, however it also does not make sense to repeat the many books and manuals on SPICE usage here. There also had been decribed commands (e.g. .op 20ns) which are not available in most SPICEs, and there has been no citation where this might stem from.
James HV (talk) 13:52, 06 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of "Transient Simulation" chapter 

message: Previously, the article said Spice2 had "an innovative FORTRAN-based memory allocation system developed by another graduate student, Ellis Cohen."  I removed the portion about Ellis Cohen because Nagel said in 2013 "There is this persistent rumor that Ellis Cohen added dynamic memory allocation to SPICE 2.  Both Ellis and I will tell you that it was I who added dynamic memory allocation to SPICE 2.  It's in my thesis."  with ref to where he said this (ltwiki.org)
This was however the only reference to Cohen. I added his role in "Ellis Cohen led development from version 2B to the industry standard SPICE 2G6, released in 1983" per Nagel's comment about this at Nagel's site. 88.18.98.188 (talk) 19:57, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of Ellis Cohen as creator of the memory management 

message: The website bwrcs.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/IcBook/SPICE/
no longer seems to work, however its archive is available: https://web.archive.org/web/http://bwrcs.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/IcBook/SPICE/ 78.177.143.13 (talk) 13:24, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: • Sbmeirow • Talk • 15:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to the SPICE1/2/3 no longer work