SPICE is a general-purpose, open-source analog electronic circuit simulator. It stands for Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis. ngspice is a successor, and is easily installable on Linux. It’s the simulator I’ve used to explore the Skywater 130 PDK.

Here’s an example spice simulation file that I used to simulate the inverter I drew.

And here’s a nice demo of me showing how a flip-flop works by simulating a Sky130 D type flip flop with SPICE.

Course feedback

ASICs are a chunk of the stack that just seems so impenetrable because typically you need enormous amounts of money and access to PDKs and Cadence and all this stuff. It seemed like an awesome way to fill in that missing piece of how computers work top to bottom.

Ben Newhouse (digital course)