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- Ngspice F.A.Q.Version 2.3 (ngspice-31 release)
-
- Maintained by Holger Vogt
- Last update: 09-14-2018
-
- This document contains the Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers)
- for ngspice project.
- __________________________________________________________________________
-
- Table of Contents
-
-
- 1. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL INFORMATION
- 1.1 What is ngspice?
- 1.2 What is sharedspice?
- 1.3 What is tclspice ?
- 1.4 Why resurrecting Berkeley's Spice?
- 1.5 What is the project's goal?
- 1.6 What you are going to do?
- 1.7 Legal issues
- 1.8 Discussion groups
- 1.9 What mailing lists exist for ngspice?
- 1.10 Are the mailing lists archived anywhere?
- 1.11 Where can I get a copy of ngspice?
- 1.12 Where should I look on the World Wide Web for ngspice stuff?
- 1.13 Where should I look on the World Wide Web for Spice documentation?
-
- 2. DEVELOPMENT
- 2.1 What is the current version?
- 2.2 What are the latest features in the current release?
- 2.3 What does it look like?
- 2.4 Who are the authors of ngspice?
- 2.5 How can I report a bug/request for a feature?
- 2.6 How can I join the development?
-
- 3. SOLUTIONS TO COMMON MISCELLANEOUS PROBLEMS
- 3.1 What systems are supported?
- 3.2 I get errors when I try to compile the source code, why?
- 3.3 This document didn't answer my question. Where else can I look for
- an answer?
-
- 4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- 4.1 Feedback
- 4.2 Formats in which this FAQ is available
- 4.3 Authorship and acknowledgements
- 4.4 Disclaimer and Copyright
-
-
- ______________________________________________________________________
-
- 1. INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL INFORMATION
-
-
-
- 1.1 What is ngspice ?
-
- Ngspice is a mixed-level/mixed-signal circuit simulator, based on three
- open source software packages: Spice3f5, Cider1b1 and Xspice, and
- including many bug fixes and enhancements:
-
- - Spice3 is a widely used circuit simulator. It was developed by the
- University of California at Berkeley (UCB), by "a cast of thousand"
- (as they say) initially under the guide of Donald O. Peterson.
-
- - Cider is a mixed-level simulator that already includes Spice3f5 and
- adds a device simulator to it: DSIM. Cider couples the circuit level
- simulator to the device simulator to provide greater simulation
- accuracy (at the expense of greater simulation time). Critical
- devices can be described with technology parameters (numerical
- models) and non critical ones with the original spice's compact
- models.
-
- - Xspice is an extension to Spice3 that provides code modeling support
- and simulation of digital components through an embedded event
- driven algorithm.
-
- The NG prefix has lot of meanings: Next Generation, New (and) Good, etc.
- Choose or invent the one you prefer. The heart of the project is the
- ngspice program, with its tremendous advancements.
-
-
- 1.2 What is sharedspice ?
-
- Sharedspice is an interface option to ngspice. It compiles the simulator
- into a shared object (or dynamic link library), providing full control
- of ngspice to any suitable controlling program (GUI, optimizer,
- development system, etc., to be provided by the user).
-
-
- 1.3 What is tclspice ?
-
- Tclspice is a another interface option of ngspice, providing a tcl/tk
- interface to the user. Tclspice is both a batch and interactive simulator
- and a building block for simulator applications. Analyses can be run
- from a tcl script and vector plotted or post processed using tcl. A small
- GUI may be built by the user to analyze a circuit or a set of circuits.
- Tclspice is obtained compiling ngspice activating an additional option.
- This has not been used and tested for some time.
-
-
- 1.4 Why resurrecting Berkeley's Spice?
-
- Berkeley's Spice can be considered the father of most circuit
- simulators available today. It is an old but still good piece of
- software, it may not be the fastest or the most reliable but it's
- free, it's available in source code and most of the electrical
- simulators inherited it's syntax. Spice3 is based on proven numerical
- algorithms (most commercial implementations have only strengthened
- them), implements most of the models for MOSFET submicron design
- and has a powerful set of analyses. The readily availability of
- its source code in the past made this simulator the de-facto standard.
-
-
- 1.5 What is the project's goal?
-
- Ngspice is both a maintenance and enhancement project. It is a maintenance
- project because it aims to provide the free EDA community the best spice3
- simulator available. This means fixing bugs, adding new features but always
- in the spice3 framework. Achieving compatibility with commercial spice based
- simulators and provide users the latest devices models are important goals
- of the project. Improvements in the postprocessing (data handling
- capabilities) and user interface are other goals.
-
-
- 1.6 What you are going to do?
-
- An official roadmap for ngspice was never drawn. Contributions made by
- developers drive ngspice development and the roadmap is built day by
- day by developers writing on the lists. Ngspice development activity
- can be summarized in 3 points:
-
- + Compatibility: Ngspice should be compatible with commercial products,
- thus allowing people to use the netlist generated for such tools. As
- most of the commercial simulators available tracked each other in netlist
- language, this should not be an impossible task. The most important goal
- here is to provide a reliable support for model libraries coming from
- foundries.
-
- + Compact models: The interest in using ngspice is intimately connected
- to the available models. To provide the latest models available for
- active and passive devices is a fundamental goal of the project. In
- this direction we are integrating ADMS model compiler into ngspice.
-
- + Documentation: Commercial simulators come with very good manuals
- containing tutorials, description of models equations, example of
- use, suggestions, etc. Spice came with little documentation. The
- Spice3f manual, available on the Internet has been used as the basis
- for the new manual. It will be constantly improved during ngspice
- development and integrated with the documentation accompanying Xspice
- and Cider. The ngspice manual today contains description of all
- features ngspice is offering. It is however not a tutorial of ngspice
- usage, but there are now several good ones available on the internet
- (see http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/tutorials.html).
-
-
- 1.7 Legal issues
-
- The ngspice base license is new BSD, as provided by UCB. For some parts
- of the code other compatible licences apply. All licenses are DFSG
- compatible. Please see file COPYING for details.
-
-
- 1.8 Discussion groups
-
- Vivid discussion are going on in the ngspice discussion groups.
- They are found at https://sourceforge.net/p/ngspice/discussion/
- A new group 'ngspice tips and examples' will present interesting
- ngspice tips (your input is welcome!)
-
-
- 1.9 What mailing lists exist for ngspice?
-
- Mailing lists have somewhat lost importance compared to the
- discussion groups described above.
-
- There are two general mailing lists dedicated to the ngspice project.
-
- Users mailing list: <ngspice-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
- This list is for ngspice users. Examples, problems, bug reports
- and general discussion on ngspice can be sent here.
-
- Developers mailing list: <ngspice-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
- The list is dedicated to ngspice development. Developers should
- subscribe here, to follow the program development. May be used
- to send patches, and technical discussion on ngspice.
-
- Send an empty message with Subject "help" to the following addresses
- to get instructions.
-
- <ngspice-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net>
- <ngspice-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net>
-
- Send an empty message to the following address to Subscribe.
-
- <ngspice-users-join@lists.sourceforge.net>
- <ngspice-devel-join@lists.sourceforge.net>
-
- Documentation about the user interface of
- these mailing lists can be found at:
- http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member
-
-
- 1.10 Are the mailing lists archived anywhere ?
-
- Yes, the lists are archived. There are two places where to look for
- archives. The project started on the IEEE Central and South Italy
- web server and then moved to sourceforge. Sourceforge provides an
- archiving service that cam be accessed via the summary page:
-
- http://sourceforge.net/p/ngspice/mailman/
-
-
- 1.11 Where can I get a copy of ngspice?
-
- You can download ngspice from:
-
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngspice/files/ng-spice-rework/
-
-
- 1.12 Where should I look on the World Wide Web for ngspice stuff?
-
- Look at the official Ngpice Web Page:
-
- http://ngspice.sourceforge.net
-
-
- 1.13 Where should I look on the World Wide Web for Spice documentation?
-
- There is a detailed ngspice manual available at:
- http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/docs.html
-
- Others docs are assembled at:
- http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/literature.html
-
-
-
- 2. DEVELOPMENT
-
-
- 2.1. What is the current version?
-
- The latest version released is:
-
- * ngspice-31 (released on 22/09/2019)
-
-
- 2.2. What are the latest features in the current release?
-
-- New features:
- + configure flag --with-fftw3 If set to 'no', internal fast fourier is used
- instead of fftw
- + command setseed to set the seed value for the random number generator
- + option seed=[val|random]
- + variable inputdir to remeber and retrieve the last input file directory
- + example directory 'digital' with analog, behavioral and digital example input files
- + new XSPICE filesource, d_source, and state-machine examples
- + +, - maybe part of instance name
- + Quasi-saturation VDMOS example
- + add environmental variable SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH to allow reproducible executables
- + new parameters to command setplot: setplot next, setplot previous
- + updates to commands cd, rusage, print
- + update to bipolar and diode temperature equations
-
-- Bug fixes:
- + several bug fixes
- + lots of memory leaks removed, especially when XSPICE circuits are called several
- times in a loop.
-
-
- 2.3. What does it look like?
-
- Ngspice, as the original Spice3 (and Xspice and Cider) is a command
- line simulator, but with a graphics output capability.
-
-
- 2.4. Who are the authors of ngspice?
-
- The development is open to anyone who wish to contribute. If the
- original Spice3 was made with the contribution of "a cast of
- thousand", ngspice can only increase that number. An incomplete
- list of contributor makes the "acknowledgements" page of the ngspice
- manual.
-
-
- 2.5. How can I report a bug/request for a feature?
-
- The ngspice summary page (hosted on Sourceforge) has bug-reporting,
- feature-request and bugs trackers. You can use them or subscribe to
- mailing lists and post there. The former is preferred since almost
- it allows to track all necessary actions upon a bug. The web site at
- http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/bugrep.html will give you more details.
-
-
- 2.6. How can I join the development?
-
- To join the development just code the feature you want to add and send
- your patch in the mailing list. Before you start coding check the
- latest development release of ngspice from our git repository.
- It might be that your feature has already been implemented.
-
- There is no bureaucracy here.
-
-
-
- 3. SOLUTIONS TO COMMON MISCELLANEOUS PROBLEMS
-
-
- 3.1. What systems are supported?
-
- Ngspice is written in C, and uses some GNU extensions, then you need
- a GNU C compiler and a UNIX environment to compile it. Ngspice can
- be compiled under Windows using the mingw or cygwin environment as
- well as MS Visual Studio.
-
-
- 3.2. I get errors when I try to compile the source code, why?
-
- This is a one-million-euros question :).
-
- Write to the user's discussion group describing the problem and providing
- information on the type of hardware, the flavour of operating system.
-
-
- 3.3. This document didn't answer my question. Where else can I look
- for an answer?
-
- Read old messages from the mailing list archive, search the web site
- or read the docs. Upgrade to the latest version of ngspice, many
- problems are fixed in the new versions. If you still can't find an
- answer, post your question to the mailing lists.
-
-
-
- 4. ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
-
-
- 4.1. Feedback
-
- Send your comments about this F.A.Q. to:
- https://sourceforge.net/p/ngspice/discussion/127605/
-
-
- 4.2. Formats in which this FAQ is available
-
- This document is available only in ASCII format in the ngspice source
- package.
-
-
- 4.3. Authorship and acknowledgements
-
- Parts of the questions and answers originate from Paolo Nenzi
- and are updated by Holger Vogt.
-
-
- 4.4. Disclaimer and Copyright
-
- Copyright: Holger Vogt, 2018
- License: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) v4.0.
- This document is provided as is. The information in it is not
- warranted to be correct: you use it at your own risk.