Re: [ng-spice] Proposal for ngspice development in winter


To ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
From "JWS RH" <jwsrh@hotmail.com>
Date Thu, 01 Nov 2001 15:20:56 +0000
Delivered-To mailing list ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
Mailing-List contact ng-spice-help@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it; run by ezmlm
Reply-To ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it

The biggest hole I perceive in ACS is its partial
set of intrinsic models (device models). It has
some MOS, diodes, but (last I looked) no BJTs, JFET
or other odds & ends.

So one very relevant activity, as I see it, would
be translation of the Spice3 intrinsic models into
functioning ACS models. Al has been talking about
some sort of model compiler thing, that might make
this quite tractable.

Another activity-of-value, more in line with user
than programmer skills, would be to attack ACS
with a fine-toothed comb and assess its readiness
for the design task; that is, how easy or difficult
or broken are its command language, its graphical
and list outputs, its ability to operate from
input pipe into output pipe/file (key to integration
w/ a higher-level design manager shell). How
accessible and standard are rawfile and mapfile
formats (presuming some external results browser
might be used)? How large a circuit can run without
choking? These things would be interesting to have
known, and would indicate where effort might be
applied.

If ACS is improved in these ways, then Berkeley's
license posture becomes moot, and good riddance.

Yet another activity-of-value would be a companion
software, a simulation X-win menu tool which would
semi-automate (extensibly) the simulation tasks and
dependencies, and provide schematic-based waveform
probing, device OP/MODEL, wire NV/TNV output,
etc. This is not on the map yet for gEDA as far
as I've seen but a quantum leap in circuit design
efficiency especially when you get into circuits
of significant size.





>Al has asked us to work with him, donating the code "to the cause" and
>evev changing ACS name to reflect the change in the development team.
>
>The main problem for switching to ACS was the C++ language.


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp


Partial thread listing: