Circuits design using

Computer

Lecture 1
Introduction
Dr. Emad Badry
Lecturer at faculty of Engineering, Suez Canal University
emad.badry@eng.suez.edu.eg
 EDA History

❑ EDA stands for Electronic Design Automation.

❑ IBM pioneered EDA in the late 1950s with documentation of the 700 series computers.

❑ By 1966 James Koford and his colleagues at IBM Fishkill were capturing SLT hybrid circuit module (1964
Milestone) designs on graphical displays, checking them for errors and automatically converting the
information into mask patterns.

❑ After Koford joined Fairchild R&D he worked with Hugh Mays,

Ed Jones, and others to apply this process to monolithic ICs.
Their efforts created logic simulators (FAIRSIM), test program
generators, and place and route software for gate arrays and
standard cells (1967 Milestone) that laid the ground work for
generations of EDA tools.
❑ Larry Nagel and Donald Pederson, with later contributions by Richard Newton, at U.C. Berkeley developed
the SPICE (Simulation Program with IC Emphasis) circuit simulation program in the 1960s.

❑ Commercial logic synthesis packages from Cadence and Synopsys in the 1980s were stimulated by research at
U.C. Berkeley (SIS), U.C.L.A. (RASP), and University of Colorado.

IBM 360/67 mainframe-powered CAD system at Fairchild in 1967

❑ EDA tools cover almost every aspect of integrated circuits, from Hardware Description Language (HDL)
to logic simulation tools. (Logic Simulation), from Logic Synthesis to Auto Place & Route; from design
rule check/DRC & electrical rule check/ERC to Layout versus Schematic, LVS) to the manufacturing test
of the chip
 SPICE Programming History

❑ SPICE is a computer program designed to simulate analog electronic circuits. Its original intent was for the
development of integrated circuits, from which it derived its name: Simulation Program with Integrated
Circuit Emphasis.

❑ The origin of SPICE traces back to another circuit simulation program called CANCER. Developed by
professor Ronald Rohrer of U.C. Berkeley along with some of his students in the late 1960’s, CANCER
continued to be improved through the early 1970’s.

❑ When Rohrer left Berkeley, CANCER was re-written and re-named to SPICE, released as version 1 to the
public domain in May of 1972.
❑ Version 2 of SPICE was released in 1975.

❑ A major improvement came about in March of 1985 with version 3 of SPICE (also released under public
domain). Written in the C language rather than FORTRAN, version 3 incorporated additional transistor
types (the MOSFET, for example), and switch elements.
 Some of EAD tools

Area Cadence Synopsys Mentor

Schematic/Layout Custom compiler Virtouso Tanner S-Edit

Simulation Incisive-NcSim VCS Questasim

Hspice Spectre Tanner T-Spice
Debugging Incisive Verdi Questa
Waveform viewer Custom WaveView Virtosou Visualization EZ Wave

Place and Route (P Encounter IC Compiler Olympus

& R)
DRC/LVS IC validator Assura/PVS Calibre nmDRC
Calibre nmLVS
Logic Synthesis RTL Compiler Design Compiler Intutive

The most famous SPICE-based simulators are Pspice, LTspice, Hspice, Eldo, NGspice, and Cadence spectre