T
Tom Russo
Guest
Announcing the Open Source Release of Xyce 6.0
November 5, 2013 - Xyce, Sandia National Laboratories' SPICE-compatible
parallel circuit simulator, is available for free public download for
the first time. Xyce has been developed internally at Sandia National
Laboratories and funded by the National Nuclear Security
Administration's Advanced Strategic Computing (ASC) Program. By
open-sourcing Xyce, the code team hopes to foster external
collaborations and solicit feedback from the simulation community.
Parallel Implementation
Xyce was designed as a parallel simulation code. Primarily, the
parallelism is based around a message-passing implementation (MPI).
Parallel scaling is very problem-specific, but for certain problems Xyce
has shown scalability out to hundreds of processes.
Xyce is not SPICE
One of the goals of the Xyce development team has been for Xyce to be
SPICE-compatible. However, Xyce is not a derivative of SPICE. It was
designed and written from scratch.
Device Model Support
As a SPICE-compatible tool, Xyce supports a canonical set of compact
models, including the various BSIMs, PSP, VBIC and FBH. Additionally, a
large number non-traditional models are implemented, which support
neuron simulation and reaction networks. Behavioral modeling is
supported by a powerful expression library, and Verilog-A models can be
incorporated with a model compiler.
Analysis options
As a SPICE-compatible tool, Xyce supports standard analysis methods such
as steady-state(DCOP), transient(TRAN), and small-signal frequency
domain (AC). A number of more exotic analysis methods have also been
implemented, including Harmonic Balance (HB), Multi-Time PDE (MPDE), and
model-order reduction methods (MOR).
Solvers
Xyce uses the Trilinos solver library, an open-source solver library
also under development at Sandia. Trilinos is an effort to develop and
implement robust algorithms and enabling technologies using modern
object-oriented software design, while still leveraging the value of
established libraries such as PETSc, Metis/ParMetis, SuperLU, Aztec, the
BLAS and LAPACK. In addition, a number of circuit-specific solvers have
been developed for Xyce, specifically, including the KLU direct solver.
C++ code design
Similar to Trilinos, Xyce is written in C++, with modular, flexible
design as a goal. Where appropriate, Xyce applies abstract interfaces
to enable easy development of different analysis types, solvers and
models.
Portability
Xyce is supported on Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and OS X,
and on Windows.
Opportunities
The goal of the Xyce development team is to seek new opportunities and
solicit feedback. Our experience has been that new collaborators, new
benchmarks and external feedback can be a valuable starting point for
code improvements. Open Source Xyce is available under the open-source
license GPL version 3.0.
Download
For more information about Xyce, and to download the code, visit the new
Xyce Home Page at http://xyce.sandia.gov.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and
operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed
Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear
Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
--
Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m]
November 5, 2013 - Xyce, Sandia National Laboratories' SPICE-compatible
parallel circuit simulator, is available for free public download for
the first time. Xyce has been developed internally at Sandia National
Laboratories and funded by the National Nuclear Security
Administration's Advanced Strategic Computing (ASC) Program. By
open-sourcing Xyce, the code team hopes to foster external
collaborations and solicit feedback from the simulation community.
Parallel Implementation
Xyce was designed as a parallel simulation code. Primarily, the
parallelism is based around a message-passing implementation (MPI).
Parallel scaling is very problem-specific, but for certain problems Xyce
has shown scalability out to hundreds of processes.
Xyce is not SPICE
One of the goals of the Xyce development team has been for Xyce to be
SPICE-compatible. However, Xyce is not a derivative of SPICE. It was
designed and written from scratch.
Device Model Support
As a SPICE-compatible tool, Xyce supports a canonical set of compact
models, including the various BSIMs, PSP, VBIC and FBH. Additionally, a
large number non-traditional models are implemented, which support
neuron simulation and reaction networks. Behavioral modeling is
supported by a powerful expression library, and Verilog-A models can be
incorporated with a model compiler.
Analysis options
As a SPICE-compatible tool, Xyce supports standard analysis methods such
as steady-state(DCOP), transient(TRAN), and small-signal frequency
domain (AC). A number of more exotic analysis methods have also been
implemented, including Harmonic Balance (HB), Multi-Time PDE (MPDE), and
model-order reduction methods (MOR).
Solvers
Xyce uses the Trilinos solver library, an open-source solver library
also under development at Sandia. Trilinos is an effort to develop and
implement robust algorithms and enabling technologies using modern
object-oriented software design, while still leveraging the value of
established libraries such as PETSc, Metis/ParMetis, SuperLU, Aztec, the
BLAS and LAPACK. In addition, a number of circuit-specific solvers have
been developed for Xyce, specifically, including the KLU direct solver.
C++ code design
Similar to Trilinos, Xyce is written in C++, with modular, flexible
design as a goal. Where appropriate, Xyce applies abstract interfaces
to enable easy development of different analysis types, solvers and
models.
Portability
Xyce is supported on Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and OS X,
and on Windows.
Opportunities
The goal of the Xyce development team is to seek new opportunities and
solicit feedback. Our experience has been that new collaborators, new
benchmarks and external feedback can be a valuable starting point for
code improvements. Open Source Xyce is available under the open-source
license GPL version 3.0.
Download
For more information about Xyce, and to download the code, visit the new
Xyce Home Page at http://xyce.sandia.gov.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and
operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed
Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear
Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
--
Tom Russo KM5VY SAR502 DM64ux http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM QRPL#1592 K2#398 SOC#236 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z] [n-z][a-m]