SPICE, the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuits Emphasis, has turned 40 years old. The IEEE has marked the occasion by designating the development of SPICE as a Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. On February 23rd, the Computer History Museum hosted a celebration with a roundtable discussion by the individuals most responsible for bringing SPICE from its origin as a UC Berkeley student project to the huge commercial success it has achieved as the most widely used tool in the semiconductor industry.
The panel (from left to right, apologies for the poor quality picture from my iPhone) consisted of:
I have benefited greatly from connections with each of these individuals throughout my career. My first connection with Ron was at SMU when I was completing my MSEE degree and he was chairman and dean of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. (Where, incidentally, he was also thesis advisor to Synopsys founder Aart de Geus) . Later, Ron went on to what was then GE-Calma while I was at the GE Corporate R&D Labs. Later, he became chairman of analog layout synthesis startup Neolinear, which was eventually acquired by Cadence. Ron helped me get my job at Cadence as well.
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My transition from IC design to EDA started with establishing the East Coast sales office for Meta-Software, but I first met the Haileys when I was at GE. We eventually made HSPICE GE’s corporate simulator, after a difficult internal battle to convince developers to give up on creating a GE-SPICE. That battle involved digging into Larry Nagel’s SPICE2 thesis, to better understand the convergence issues we were having with our copy of Berkeley SPICE. HSPICE fixed that problem.
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Ironically, Larry later led a simulation and characterization group at Anadigics that became one of our HSPICE customers. I met Ken when we were both at Cadence, and have also done work with him at his current company – Designer’s Guide Consulting. And of course, as a CMOS analog IC designer, I have poured through papers and books authored by David Hodges many, many times. At GE CR&D we worked with Prof. Hodges and his students to better understand design and test methods for A/D converters.
I think it’s fair to say that if you’ve even been involved with designing an integrated circuit in any way, you have also had a connection to SPICE and these individuals, whether you realize it or not. As Ron pointed out, if you are a digital designer, your ‘.lib’ file is the result of a lot of SPICE characterization.
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