Spectre is a

SPICE In the culinary arts, a spice is any seed, fruit, root, Bark (botany), bark, or other plant substance in a form primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of pl ...

-class

circuit simulator Electronic circuit simulation uses mathematical models to replicate the behavior of an actual electronic device or circuit. Simulation software allows for the modeling of circuit operation and is an invaluable analysis tool. Due to its highly ac ...

owned and distributed by the software company

Cadence Design Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence)Investor's Business DailCEO Lip-Bu Tan Molds Troubled Cadence Into Long-Term LeaderRetrieved November 12, 2020 is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology and computational ...

. It provides the basic SPICE analyses and component models. It also supports the

Verilog-A Verilog-A is an industry standard modeling language for analog circuits. It is the continuous-time subset of Verilog-AMS. A few commercial applications may export MEMS designs in Verilog-A format. History Verilog-A was created to standardize the ...

modeling language. Spectre comes in enhanced versions that also support RF simulation (

SpectreRF SpectreRF is an option to the Spectre Circuit Simulator from Cadence Design Systems. It adds a series of analyses that are particularly useful for RF circuits to the basic capabilities of Spectre. SpectreRF was first released in 1996 and was notab ...

) and mixed-signal simulation (AMS Designer). A massively parallel version, Spectre X, was also released to provide performance gains while maintaining the same accuracy as previous Spectre versions.

Specifications

List of supported device models

* Advanced-node models, including the latest versions of the BSIM CMG, BSIM IMG, and UTSOI models * MOSFET models, including the latest versions of the BSIM3, BSIM4, BSIM Bulk (BSIM6), PSP, and HiSIM * High-voltage MOS models, including the latest versions of the HiSIM HV, MOS9, MOS11, and EKV *

Silicon on insulator In semiconductor manufacturing, silicon on insulator (SOI) technology is fabrication of silicon semiconductor devices in a layered silicon–insulator–silicon substrate, to reduce parasitic capacitance within the device, thereby improving perf ...

(SOI), including latest versions of BTASOI, SSIMSOI, BSIMSOI, BSIMSOI PD, and HiSIM SOI *

Bipolar junction transistor A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor (FET), uses only one kind of charge carrier. A ...

(BJT) models, including the latest versions of VBIC, HICUM, Mextram, HBT, and Gummel-Poon models * Diode models, including the diode, Phillips level 500, and CMC diode models *

JFET The junction field-effect transistor (JFET) is one of the simplest types of field-effect transistor. JFETs are three-terminal semiconductor devices that can be used as electronically controlled switches or resistors, or to build amplifiers. U ...

models, including the JFET, Phillips level 100 JFET, and Individual dual-gate JFET models *

IGBT An insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is a three-terminal power semiconductor device primarily forming an electronic switch. It was developed to combine high efficiency with fast switching. It consists of four alternating layers (NPNP) that ...

models, including PSpice® IGBT model and HiSIM IGBT models * Resistors, including linear resistor, diffused resistor, CMC two-terminal and three-terminal resistor, and physical resistor models * GaAs MESFET models, includes latest versions of GaAs, TOM2, TOM3, and Angelov * GaN MESFET models, including Angelov, ASM, and MVSG models * Silicon TFT models, including RPI Poly-Silicon and

Amorphous silicon Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs. Used as semiconductor material for a-Si solar cells, or thin-film silicon solar cells, it is deposited in thin films onto ...

Thin-Film models *

compact device models * Z and S domain sources * User-defined compiled model interface (CMI), allowing for the rapid inclusion of user-defined models * Josephson Junctions * Specialized reliability models (AgeMOS) for simulating the effect of HCI and BTI * Miscellaneous power models, including the relay, transformer, non-linear magnetic core, and winding * Miscellaneous RF models, including the DC block, DC feedthrough, and microstrip and stripline elements (bend, cross, corner, curve, open line, tee models)

Language and Netlist support

The

netlist In electronic design, a netlist is a description of the connectivity of an electronic circuit. In its simplest form, a netlist consists of a list of the electronic components in a circuit and a list of the nodes they are connected to. A netwo ...

formats, behavioral modeling languages, parasitic netlist formats, and stimulus files are common across the Spectre Simulation Platform. Supported formats include: # Spectre and SPICE netlist formats # Spectre, SPICE, and PSpice models # Verilog-A 2.0 LRM-compliant behavioral models and structural netlists # DSPF/SPEF parasitic formats #

S-parameter Scattering parameters or S-parameters (the elements of a scattering matrix or S-matrix) describe the electrical behavior of linear electrical networks when undergoing various steady state stimuli by electrical signals. The parameters are useful ...

data files in Touchstone, CITI-file, and Spectre formats # SST2, PSF, PSF XL, and FSDB

waveform In electronics, acoustics, and related fields, the waveform of a signal is the shape of its Graph of a function, graph as a function of time, independent of its time and Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude Scale (ratio), scales and of any dis ...

formats # Digital vector (VEC), Verilog-Value Change Dump (VCD), Extended Verilog-Value Change Dump (EVCD), and digital stimulus

History

Spectre was developed at

Ken Kundert Kenneth S. Kundert is an engineer who has done work in the area of electronic design automation (EDA). He studied electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley under professors Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Robert G. Meye ...

and Jacob K. White.

References

* Electronic circuit simulators {{Electronics-stub