Release of an Upgraded SmartSpice
Interface to Cadence

The SmartSpice Interface to Cadence integrates the Analog Artist and Composer elements of the Cadence Design Framework II (DFII) with SmartSpice. This integration is accomplished, in versions 4.4.0 and later of DFII, through the Cadence Spice Socket (cdsSpice) and the OASIS interface in the Analog Artist and Composer components of DFII. Versions of DFII prior to 4.4.0 are also supported by SmartSpice, but these solutions rely on the older HSPICE Socket, and necessarily offer substantially less functionality than is provided by the current interface. This article will therefore concentrate on the OASIS/ Spice Socket version of the SmartSpice interface, first summarizing the development done to date, before going on to describe some significant enhancements which will be incorporated into the next release of the interface.

The SmartSpice interface is distributed as the Silvaco product “ssi_cds”, with the version currently standing at 1.0.9.R. The interface can be installed into one or more existing platform-dependent installations of DFII with the command: