History of SPICE
SPICE is a computer program designed to
simulate analog electronic circuits. It original intent was
for the development of integrated circuits, from which it
derived its name: Simulation Program with Integrated
Circuit Emphasis.
The origin of SPICE traces back to another
circuit simulation program called CANCER. Developed by
professor Ronald Rohrer of U.C. Berkeley along with some of
his students in the late 1960's, CANCER continued to be
improved through the early 1970's. When Rohrer left
Berkeley, CANCER was re-written and re-named to SPICE,
released as version 1 to the public domain in May of 1972.
Version 2 of SPICE was released in 1975 (version 2g6 -- the
version used in this book -- is a minor revision of this
1975 release). Instrumental in the decision to release SPICE
as a public-domain computer program was professor Donald
Pederson of Berkeley, who believed that all significant
technical progress happens when information is freely
shared. I for one thank him for his vision.
A major improvement came about in March of
1985 with version 3 of SPICE (also released under public
domain). Written in the C language rather than FORTRAN,
version 3 incorporated additional transistor types (the
MESFET, for example), and switch elements. Version 3 also
allowed the use of alphabetical node labels rather than only
numbers. Instructions written for version 2 of SPICE should
still run in version 3, though.
Despite the additional power of version 3, I
have chosen to use version 2g6 throughout this book because
it seems to be the easiest version to acquire and run on
different computer systems. |