[sdiy] SPICE and Processors

[Magnus Danielson]

Antti Huovilainen wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Jul 2009, Jerry Gray-Eskue wrote:
> 
>> The cheapest and easiest way to speed things up is to kill off as many 
>> tasks
>> as possible, that is to say run Only spice, No web browser, word 
>> processor,
>> etc. You may be surprised how fast spice will run when it is the only 
>> thing
>> running.
> 
> Unless you have something severely wrong (flash videos open in browser 
> etc), the difference is minimal. Perhaps 5% on average. The difference 
> between Pentium-M and Core 2 Duo is due to Core 2 having a bit more 
> efficient FPU, not due to multiple cores.

The original SPICE is far from multi-threaded or other means to take 
advantage of multiple processing units. Most of the cheaper SPICE tools 
should not be expected to in any way have fixed that.

There are commercial SPICE tools that can use multiple processors, but 
cost is ehm.. a bit prohibiting for hobby use.

The interested reader could read Al's thesis (Al as in Al's Circuit 
Simulator ACS - now called GNUCAP). It details the underlying algorithms 
and problems they have.

Cheers,
Magnus