From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: reed@reedmedia.net (Jeremy C. Reed) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 17:58:41 -0600 (CST) Subject: [TUHS] Unix Circuit Design System In-Reply-To: <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com> References: <20151231232859.GB8120@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 31 Dec 2015, Larry McVoy wrote: > Any chance this was code that turned into the Ousterhout stuff, I think it > was called spice? While I am not involved with it at all, I did interview a couple developers toward my BSD history book. (The following is from my 3BSD "Welcome to Virtual Vax/UNIX" chapter.) \textsc{Spice} 2\index{SPICE}, the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis, was another program that benefited from the VAX work. This Fortran program predicted the electrical characteristics of an integrated circuit. Spearheaded by professor Donald O. Pederson\index{Pederson, Donald O.}, who helped establish a fabrication lab --- the first integrated circuit fabrication facility at any university\cite{donpederson2005} --- in the 1960's, it was developed by the integrated circuits group of the Electronics Research Laboratory and the Electrical Engineering department [at University of California at Berkeley] in the mid 1970's. To many it is considered the first significant open source program. The program was available free of charge, for not-for-profit uses to any interested party. % above CITE archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/src/cmd/spice/roots.f Its source code was distributed for the cost of writing the tape and copying the documentation, so it was decided to include it on the BSD distribution tape as well.\cite{tom-quarles-1} \textsc{Spice} was originally developed to run as a batch program in punched-card form on the university's CDC 6400 system outputting to a 132-column line printer, but its default allocation of 400,000 double precision numbers in an array wouldn't work with the PDP-11. It was later ported to many operating systems and machines that had adequate memory and floating point capabilities, such as VMS and Unix on the VAX.\cite{tom-quarles-1} The program shipped with BSD provided general-purpose circuit simulation for nonlinear DC, nonlinear transient, and linear AC analyses. Circuits could contain resistors, capacitors, inductors, mutual inductors, independent voltage and current sources, four types of dependent sources, transmission lines, and the four most common semiconductor devices: diodes, bjts, jfets, and mosfets.\cite{spice-vax-guide-1979} % ALSO same in archives/1970s/3bsd/usr/man/man1/spice.1 Virtually every electronic chip --- even today --- used \textsc{Spice} or one of its derivatives at critical stages during its design.\cite{donpederson2005} In fact, its name has become a verb in the industry: ``let's \textsc{Spice} that circuit and see if it works!''