Speed Up SPICE with a GPU
by Daniel Payne
Circuit designers know that SPICE circuit simulators use a large matrix to simultaneously solve for currents and voltages, taking small enough time steps to ensure convergence and simulation stability. The trouble is that using a general purpose CPU to make these matrix calculations is quite time consuming, meaning that an engineer can wait hours or days to see any simulation results. Since necessity is the mother of all invention, some clever EDA engineers have looked to speed up SPICE circuit simulations by using GPUs.
2.) TinySPICE
3.)
with CUSPICE 4.) CUDA Circuit Simulator
The need to simulate IC designs in a reasonable amount of time at the transistor level has become a real bottleneck for standard cell, memory design and AMS IP design. Designing with FinFET and small geometry nodes only increases the amount of process corners that need to be simulated for a robust design, so speeding up SPICE simulations is quite welcomed. It looks like using a GPU to speed things up is gaining traction in both the commercial and academic segments, and Daniel Payne loves to hear how Synopsys does against the underdog Empyrean [read more...]
