cdaf@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Charles Daffinger) (09/16/89)
Here's a summary of the respones I received about analog vlsi simuilation:
>> Many thanks to those who responded. <<
Some students who took Carver Mead's class at Caltech used a layout
tool called WOL and a simulator called ANALOG, both developed inhouse
at Caltech. These appear to currently be unavailable, as they only run
on some older HP models. However, there is an effort to port these to
more available platforms, and they could be available 'one of these
days'.
Several mentions were made that MAGIC from Berkeley, which is free to
universities, is perfectly adequate for the layout job. [this is
what we use here].
Comments about Spice were that it was hard to use because it doesn't
handle feedback very well, and has a clumsy user interface.
From another list someone said 'not to be too hard on spice...'.
Use the bsim level of sumulation, which simulates at the sub-
threshold level. [ I would like to try it, but have found the documentation
hard to find. If anybody has experience using Spice3c1 with the
bsim level of simulation, I would like to hear from you. -cdaf]
There were several mentions of industrial design tools for analog
design. One is "an industry CAD package from Cadence ( 408-943-1234 ).
This is a great big package for doing all-angle design with DRC and
extraction."
'Saber from Analogy, Inc. ( 503-643-3361 ) is a quite a powerful simulator
and has a pretty good user interface.'
Another industrial design tool was the ELLA behavioral simulator for simulating
and designing mixed analog/digital ASICs from Praxis in the UK:
"[customers] report that they couldn't have designed the ASICs any other way.
"ELLA is cheap for educational use. Richard Newton has ELLA - as a front end
to synthesis tools. (We have the world's best architectural synthesis tool,
too [LOCAM], but that's a different advertisement!)."
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-charles
--
Charles Daffinger >Take me to the river, Drop me in the water< (812) 339-7354
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