SPICE RESOURCES
Which SPICE to use?
SPICE simulation will be used intensively throughout the entire course. You will be given an instructional Unix account to access to the computing resources in EECS department.
We will be using HSPICE and its post-processor AWAVES for this course. As the testbenches used for evaluating and verifying your solution to the design problems are written in HSPICE, you are required to use only HSPICE for this course.
Connecting to UC Berkeley
You need SSH to connect to UC Berkeley for secured encryption. SSH is available for free from (1) UC Berkeley and (2) SSH.com
You can login to these remote servers via SSH from your office/home to run HSPICE and AWAVES.
If your operating system is Windows, you will need X-Windows to run AWAVES. We are using Exceed from Hummngbird in Berkeley. Exceed is a licensed software and evaluation copy is only valid for 30 days. Another X-Windows software is X-Win32 from Starnet Communications. X-Win32 is also a licensed software and evaluation copy is valid for 30 days only. You will need to run your X-Windows before running AWAVES.
If your operating system is UNIX, MacOSX or LINUX, either the OS is already X11 compatible or you should able to get a free copy of X-Windows (e.g. XFree86 for Linux).
If you have your own personal access to HSPICE/AWAVES, you are welcome to use them.
To run HSPICE, type hspice at the Unix prompt.. To run AWAVES, type awaves at the Unix prompt.
Troubleshooting: Some common problems that the NTU students have had:
1) Trying to use 'telnet' or the Exceed 'xstart' or 'xsession' commands to login. This fails because SSH (on port 22) is the only login protocol that we allow.
2) SSH fails. Some industry sites have firewalls that block port 22. The student would have to talk with the company network administrator about resolving that. If you are using Exceed or X-Win32, you need to enable "X11 tunneling"
HSPICE Manuals
Here are the complete HSPICE and AWAVES mauals
1. HSPICE Manual (pdf, 12 MB)
2. AWaves User Guide (pdf, 740 KB)
3. AWaves Expression Syntax (pdf, 67 KB)
Linear Tech’s LTspice/SwitcherCAD
Linear Techology has a free version of Spice
called LTspice/SwitcherCAD. It can be downloaded along with manuals at: http://www.linear.com/designtools/software/ .
(Thank you Ruan for the information.)
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