Status of ngspice simulator
Ngspice is a general-purpose circuit simulator program. It implements three classes of analysis:
- Nonlinear DC analyses
- Nonlinear Transient analyses
- Linear AC analyses
Ngspice implements the usual circuits elements, like resistors, capacitors, inductors (single or mutual), transmission lines and a growing number of semiconductor devices like diodes, bipolar transistors, mosfets (both bulk and SOI), mesfets, jfet and HFET.
Ngspice implements the EKV model but it cannot be distributed with the package since its license does not allow to redistribute EKV source code.
Ngspice integrates Xspice, a mixed-mode simulator built upon spice3c1 (and then some tweak is necessary merge it with spice3f5). Xspice provides a codemodel interface and an event-driven simulation algorithm. Users can develop their own models for devices using the codemodel interface.
As of rework-17, the current release, Xspice integration into spice3f5 is almost complete and working (only IPC and source ramping lacks). Cider (the device level simulator) is distributed with ngspice but it is not tested and users should not relies on its results. In almost two years of development activity many bug have been fixed and some extension to the spice3f have been developed or integrated:
- Parametric netlists: netlists can contain parameters and expressions. Parametric macromodels, often released by manufacturers, can be imported as-is into ngspice.
- Spice2 polynomial sources: ngspice can parse spice2 netlists containing polynomial sources.
- Global nodes: some nodes can be defined as "global" and thus not expanded when they appear inside subcircuits.
Ngspice compiles under GNU/Linux, BSD, Windows and MacOS X.
