ABSTRACT
The early days of analyzing electrical and electronic circuits using large “mainframe” computers was anything but simple. The need to streamline the process and provide a more “friendly” user interface led to the development of various circuit simulators. The SPICE2 simulator developed at the University of California at Berkeley around the mid-1970s has become the “basis” for many of the simulators on the market today. The SPICE2 software was developed using public funds and, as such, is termed “public domain software,” therefore allowing free access to U.S. citizens. The software, however, was developed for the specific needs of the research community at U.C. Berkeley and was not intended to be supported like commercial software through routine updates and consulting services. The recognition of the large market for this type of circuit simulator software led to the development of various commercial packages that were based on SPICE2. These packages offered extensive consulting support, updates, and improvements designed to meet the needs of the industrial and academic communities. The early commercial programs, while easier to use than the original “canned” analysis programs, still required large mainframe type computers and included HSPICE, IG-SPICE, and I-SPICE1. The advent of the personal computer (PC) in the mid-1980s led to the development of a number of simulators that could run on the PC. These PC-based programs, like their mainframe counterparts, are based on the SPICE2 software and continue the “alphabet soup” naming convention. The more common ones include PSpice®, IS-SPICE, AccuSim, Spectre, and SPICE-Plus1.
