Customer Reviews

Inside Spice with CDROM (Electronic Packaging and Interconnection Series)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a must if you plan on doing any serious work with spice. It focus on the convergence of simulation rather than the circuit. So if you are looking for an introductory book, this one might be a bit too heavy. However, I like the CD rom, which includes RSpice and Rgraph. There seems to be no restriction in terms of number of devices used.

Over all, this is a very good book for engineers in practice.

Among all the books which I have come across about SPICE, this is about the best book you can find. Similar to any analog circuit design, setting all the optional parameters appropriately is always a game of trade-off among simulation speed, accuracy, and stability. I came across this book while I was working on a crystal oscillator. It has done a decent job in explaining the intricate spice parameters, such as timestep control options and numeric integration methods, without asking the reader to first become a mathematician. Nevertheless, finishing this book does not mean you will be able to solve all the convergence problems. In my opinion, the best approach to understanding spice is to experiment with the settings frequently to gain a true feeling of how they interact. I give it 4 stars because there are a lot of repeititions in the book, meaning that the author would often repeat a point using different sentences. If there is an important concept, state it once or twice, but not three or four times... The repetitive sentences gave me the feeling that he was worried the book might turn out to be too short. Having said that, I still recommend this book to any circuit designer who really desires to make their transient sims fast and accurate.

I expected this book to be a rather complete, rigorous treatment of SPICE - with lots of equations describing theory and algorithms used for SPICE simulations. Never happened. It is actually a lower undergraduate-level book of "hints and tricks." It costs too much for this type of techie-help product.

This book contains alot of information on how SPICE converges on solutions and how to deal with nonconvergence.