The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectre®

The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectre^® is an in-depth guide to circuit simulators from a designer's perspective: the pitfalls of circuit simulation, such as convergence and accuracy problems, are explained in terms a circuit designer is comfortable with. The book gives designers insight into why these problems occur and how to avoid them. It also provides practical advice on how to make many difficult measurements with a circuit simulator, such as loop gain of an op-amp or distortion measurements of such clocked circuits as d-to-a converters and sample-and-hold circuits. Finally, suggestions are given about how to handle difficult classes of circuits, such as oscillators, charge-storage or very large circuits. After reading The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectre^®, you will spend less time fighting your simulator and more time exploring, understanding and designing your circuits.
Audience: Written for practising analog and mixed-signal circuit designers who are already familiar with the basics of operating SPICE. Useful for anyone who uses a circuit simulator, no matter which, since the focus is on the fundamental characteristics and behavior of circuit simulators in general.