Hspice Vs. Spectre which is better ?

[[email protected]]

Hi All,
I am trying to reach to a conclusion on the subject line before I
finalise one of them for my new project.
I have been a rigorous Hspice user so far and used Spectre now and
then. Both the simulators come with their advantages and
disadvantages, and this precisely make the choice difficult.
** Biggest advantage of Spectre:
a. Tightly integrated within Cadence DFII framework
** Biggest dis-advantage of spectre:
a. Seemingly simple tasks like sweeping multiple parameters across
corners requires 500 mouse clicks , not to mention a license for
doing process corner analysis !!!
b. The GUI based approach "hides" the different options,
specifically related to time stepping .. integration method and stuff

** Biggest advantage of hspice:
a. Single license for almost everything except the hspiceRF stuff
(phase noise and things).
b. Mutiple sweeps across corners a cakewalk
** Biggest Dis-advantage
a. Prone to simple netlisting errors.

To me doing a simple thing like:

..dc DATA=<SOME TWO VARIABLE DATA> sweep monte=30
..alter slow
...
..alter fast

is a big headache in Spectre and I have to buy two additional licenses
(one for monte carlo and one more for corner analysis)

Lets debate

-- Alex

 

[Svenn Are Bjerkem]

Lets debate

Since we have the licenses needed to do corner simulations, I haven't
really investigated into their need when running spectre on the
command line.HSpice is a command line tool, spectre is IMHO not.
spectremdl is an attempt to achieve the same functionality, but the
work needed is a bit more. Corners can be done with aliases in mdl and
the measurements are a bit clearer in mdl as they resembles the
function you would use in ocean. Writing measurements in HSpice is
quite tedious, I think.

I am experimenting with ocean from within DFII. This give a very
powerful environment. With an enhancement of the ocean-menu posted on
this group I can have many simulations in sequence with results saved
to different directories which can be easily loaded with the results
load function in ADE for use in AWD.

 

[Joerg]

Hi All,
I am trying to reach to a conclusion on the subject line before I
finalise one of them for my new project.
I have been a rigorous Hspice user so far and used Spectre now and
then. Both the simulators come with their advantages and
disadvantages, and this precisely make the choice difficult.
** Biggest advantage of Spectre:
a. Tightly integrated within Cadence DFII framework
** Biggest dis-advantage of spectre:
a. Seemingly simple tasks like sweeping multiple parameters across
corners requires 500 mouse clicks , not to mention a license for
doing process corner analysis !!!
b. The GUI based approach "hides" the different options,
specifically related to time stepping .. integration method and stuff

** Biggest advantage of hspice:
a. Single license for almost everything except the hspiceRF stuff
(phase noise and things).
b. Mutiple sweeps across corners a cakewalk
** Biggest Dis-advantage
a. Prone to simple netlisting errors.

To me doing a simple thing like:

.dc DATA=<SOME TWO VARIABLE DATA> sweep monte=30
.alter slow
..
.alter fast

is a big headache in Spectre and I have to buy two additional licenses
(one for monte carlo and one more for corner analysis)

Lets debate

-- Alex

 

[yuryb]

SmartSpice is better !!!
Yury