A Functional Analysis of SPICE Simulations and Parameters

SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) has always been a frontier for evaluation of designed circuits and predicting their behavior. From its original development at the Electronics Research Lab of the University of California, Berkeley (1975), it has upgraded and evolved into a widely used industry standard, competent to be termed as a powerhouse for general purpose analog circuit simulation. As the IC industry these days is heavily dependent on SPICE models of their designs and due to multiple vendors pitching in the market, usage of SPICE has grown exponentially. For designers and modeling engineers to effectively design and validate the circuit performance, it is vital to have a functional understanding of how SPICE simulations are carried out in the background and what are its essential dependencies. This paper attempts to highlight the fundamental working of SPICE algorithms, analysis types and simulation parameters so as to provide a comprehensive analysis of SPICE simulations and its internal operational mechanism as compared to conventional SPICE tutorials and references.