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This month's column takes a look at some books with high EE interest, specifically a couple on Spice (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis).1 As the name implies, Spice was originally developed specifically for IC design, but has long since been used much more generally. Today, the many Spice variants are considered general-purpose electronic circuit design tools, but they are also used in broader ways, such as control system design.
Without question, the capabilities of early Spice simulators have been greatly enhanced. Spice today provides many powerful and useful features, such as Monte Carlo and worstcase analysis, circuit optimization, sophisticated display, and graphical output features, etc. Currently, some simulation packages go so far as to offer a completely integrated design program suite. They include schematic capture and pc-board layout tools, in addition to the basic simulator. And, quite obviously, any simulator's performance is tied directly to the power of the host machine, a factor which provides today's 300MHz-processor machines with some potent computational savvy.
Surely it behooves the wide-awake designer to be fully aware of this simulation power, so as to best harness it for his/her designs. This awareness, in turn, implies some measure of understanding of how Spice and Spicelike simulators work. And, here's where the well-focused and well-documented experiences of others can aid greatly.
Spice books: If you are like me, you've probably noticed that there are a lot of books out there on Spice and Spice-related simulators. You may also have wondered just which books are the good ones. I, myself, have wondered those same thoughts, and have spent money on Spice books, not always finding a full measure of satisfaction. Nevertheless, I hope the Spice books described here are ones that you'll find useful.
Ron Kielkowski of RCG Research Inc., has been presenting a series of three-day workshops on MicroSim's PSpice since 1993, and he seems to have furnished at least some of the answers.2 He has written two Spicerelated books, which are oriented to the SPICE2G.6 version, the most widely used (and also the last Fortran-based) Spice release from the University of California at Berkeley. They are reviewed below.
Inside SPICE: Overcoming the Obstacles of Circuit Simulation, 1994, ISBN: 0-07-911525-X, is a $50.00, 188page, 6- by 9-in. hardcover book...