Feature in ng-spice


To ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
From Paolo Nenzi <pnenzi@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it>
Date Wed, 14 Jul 1999 10:11:26 +0200 (CEST)
Delivered-To mailing list ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
In-Reply-To <378B9594.7BF00837@evsx.com >
Mailing-List contact ng-spice-help@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it; run by ezmlm
Reply-To ng-spice@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it

> You have the gist -- I want to make sure that my exposure
> to the tools and their terminology does not cause problems.
> But I think from you follow-up things will be fine.
We would like to follow he GNU way: rebuild it from scratch (even the
entire code if we have enough force, which we do not have yet),
nevertheless a sort of conforamnce to the industry standard has to be
taken into account. We do not want to pordice a Smart(er)Spice or an
JSpice, but still we would like to bukold something useful and your
exposure to these tools is useful when discussing functions to add,
interfaces, etc.
 
> What I was referring to was the ability to say something like 
> measure delay in transient mode from node a at a pt 1 to 
> node b at pt 2, etc etc.
Yeah, I understand, I will include in the TODO list, but at the moment I
do not see how to do it.


> These measures would be part of your deck and you could
> use it for informative reasons or use it as program control
> "delay" could be some variable in a parameter.  Much like
> .Modif you mentioned below.
Yes, an implemetantion close to the .MODIF shoud be included in our
project, I have to check IEEE and ACM docs for information about this type
of mesurements. 

> > > The second is the output.  My understanding is that there
> > > is only a textual output which allows you to graph in
> > > ASCII, or Tabular formats...  All comercial tools use
> > > some sort of binary output.  Hspice is the defacto std. (the .tr0
> > > format)  Smartspice has emulated this as a .raw file.
> > > I do not know if there is a actual standard used.
> > I think that most commercial tools uses binary output to compact the files
> > size and to discourage from take the results and import them in another
> > program.
> > >
> 
> Exactly....

I never used Hspice, but I think that it is the reference in the
electrical simulation world. By the way, if we follow an "extensible"
approach" ala plugins, we can be compatible with every moutput foermat,
now I prefer to conventrate on code debugging and model enhancements. 
The other people on this list may do something. 
Ehi men , cat got your tongue ? 
 
> yes, most commercial tools consider Hspice compatability to 
> be the "standard" for parsing purposes.

I will check with my prof. if I can get an Hspice manual.

> Bingo -- but I didn't want to use that term :-)
> Does Berkley have .alter? sweeps?
Yes, SPICE3f4(5) has alter and altermod commands but any form of
"optimization" should done at preprocessor leve (using thr csh syntax).
It is not a very powerful form of optimization, as you can imagine.
Sweeps: spice3f4(5) can do frequency and source sweep, and with a patch
temp sweep. By the way the last type is highly experimental. 

> Jeez  -- sounds like you don't need me :-)
You wrong, we need you for testing ;-)

> 
> Seriously, obviously I have some catching up to do,
> maybe private email of your status and where/what I can
> do specifically to help.  Or I can just monitor things...
I hope you would remain on the list and monitor, and, if you can, do some
testing, I think that your experience can be of  valuable  help.

Bye,
Paolo


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