{"id":16367,"date":"2021-08-04T18:42:05","date_gmt":"2021-08-04T22:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/verificationhorizons\/?p=16367"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:47:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:47:02","slug":"spice-turns-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/verificationhorizons\/2021\/08\/04\/spice-turns-50\/","title":{"rendered":"SPICE Turns 50!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

50 years ago on 4 August 1971, the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits<\/a> published the Dr. Nagel and Dr. Rohrer article on Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation (CANCER)<\/em><\/a> paper. Not too long after this, a “better” name was given to the work and CANCER became SPICE – or Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 50th anniversary celebration can be contested given work on this began in the 1969-70 academic year at UC Berkeley EECS Department. So maybe it is a bit older than 50. I would also imagine that most of us with electrical engineering degrees have used SPICE or a derivative in our studies. I count myself as being extra lucky to get a shareware tape of cad tools from the Hewlett-Packard CAD Lab at the end of a summer internship. As lucky as I was, I still need to apologize for brining a lab full of students learning program languages while being a system operator. You see, I took over the system to run my SPICE simulations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve also had the privilege to support commercial implementations of SPICE as well as to work on other technology with those who helped craft SPICE 2g6 and SPICE 3 at UC Berkeley here at Siemens EDA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I am several years removed from the analog world, I have watched the “shareware” concept of SPICE grow into a large open-source world that merits a reflection back on the path SPICE offered us. In the digital design community we enjoy with creations like UVM<\/a>. And in the not too distant future, there will be additional open-source implementations to support analog\/mixed-signal verification methodologies too. Stay tuned! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to take a look back at the History of SPICE, the 40th anniversary talk by Dr. Laurence Nagel, a link to the IEEE Council on EDA<\/a> archive is below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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