SPICE(Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) is the circuit simulator which was developed by University of California, Berkeley in 1973.
SPICE Basics
Berkley SPICE program is text based and needs these three inputs for simulation.
1) SPICE Netlist: Circuit Toplogy
2) SPICE Directive: Simulation Command and Settings
3) Model Library: Device Model for Simulation
Berkeley SPICE can run on the circuits which have passive device, active device, transmission lines and power source for dc, ac, transient and noise analysis.
SPICE History
The first SPICE presented in 1973 was coded in FORTRAN. In 1985, SPICE3 was developed which was coded in C and the final version of Berkeley SPICE is SPICE3f.
SPICE2G.6 is
SPICE (1973)
SPICE2 (1975)
SPICE2G.6 (1981)
SPICE3 (1985)
SPICE2G.6 is final version which is coded in FORTRAN. SPICE2G.6 is the origin of many circuit simulators which are released by many vendors. Today, many vendors release various tools which has schematic drawing to the front end and graphics post processors to plot the results. But it should be noted that there’re little difference among each SPICE.
Berkeley SPICE and Others
Now, you can get Berkley SPICE and other free SPICE like the followings.
・SPICE3G: The Spice Page, UC Berkeley
・ngspice: Official HP
・Qucas: Official HP
・LTspice: Linear Technology
In addition, many commercial SPICE software are available, for example, HSPICE(Synopsys), PSpice (Cadence Design Systems) and SmartSPice (Silvaco).