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: This list is for ngspice users. Examples, problems, bug reports and general discussion on ngspice can be sent here. Developers mailing list: 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. Send an empty message to the following address to Subscribe. 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.