PSpice for TI

Texas Instruments (TI) is the biggest analog semiconductor company in the world. As it happens, I wrote about TI just two weeks ago in my self-explanatorily-titled post Cadence Wins Texas Instruments' Supplier Excellence Award. 

I gave a more detailed exposition of what TI does there, but for this post the most important is that TI designs, manufactures and sells a broad portfolio of 80,000 analog and embedded processing products for applications across the board — in industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communications equipment, and enterprise systems.

Today, the focus is on analog, the biggest part of TI's business today.

PSpice for TI

Today, Cadence and TI announced that TI's customers can download PSpice for TI from the TI website. This is, no surprise, a special version of PSpice that works with the analog and mixed-signal models for TI parts. It also works with discrete components like resistors, and with generic models for common analog components such as op-amps. PSpice for TI also comes with OrCAD Capture to allow the design schematic to be entered and edited. Anyone can go to the TI website ti.com and download a copy of PSpice for TI for at no cost. Technically, it is a one-year license, but after a year, you can download a new license, still at no cost. Engineers who are designing systems in any of the markets I mentioned earlier can simulate complex analog designs using the TI-curated library without any design size limitations.

As it says in today's press release:

Product evaluation takes less time with synchronized library updates, which eliminate the need to manually import the latest TI models individually. Within the tool, users also have quick access to TI data sheets, product information, reference design test circuits and relevant search queries from TI E2E technical support forums – connecting engineers to the documentation and expertise they need to easily select, simulate and purchase TI products that meet their design needs.

Many engineers have experience with PSpice, since it is commonly used as a signoff simulator for system design. It is also widely used in college. This new arrangement will allow any engineer to bring up a familiar environment and a few minutes later be examining the performance of any TI model, or simulate and customize any TI reference design. And there are lots — PSpice for TI has access to TI's built-in model library of over 5,700 products and counting.

One key paragraph from the press release which crossed the wire this morning:

Leveraging Cadence’s advanced simulation technology, PSpice for TI enables designers to reduce the risk of circuit errors with full validation of system-level designs before prototype, going beyond the analysis capabilities of many other simulators on the market. TI also provides open access to one of the industry’s largest libraries of IC models, which are automatically synced into the tool.

Or watch the video introducing PSpice for TI:

History of PSpice

PSpice was originally created in 1984 by a company called MicroSim. OrCAD (still independent) acquired them in 1998. Then Cadence acquired OrCAD a year later in 1999. There has been lots of development of capability since then, in particular integration with MATLAB/Simulink, with SystemC, and with Verilog-ADMS. Now, in 2020, PSpice for TI is released.

PSpice is widely used today, with tens of thousands of users. It is also free for students to use, so there are large numbers of them in addition—it is pretty much ubiquitous in academia. PSpice is targeted at simulating analog components on a board, components from semiconductor companies like (say...just to pick one at random!) TI. There is a huge library of over 35,000 components available from the entire industry. Our other circuit simulator family is Spectre, which is targeted at analog and mixed-signal IC design, working off PDKs (process development kits) rather than component libraries for boards.

PSpice.com

There is a dedicated website pspice.com for all things PSpice. There are forums there with tens of thousands of users. There is a new forum especially for PSpice-TI for users to exchange experience and get questions answered by their peers. There is also a special PSpice for TI page on the website with overview and training videos, along with a link to download the product.

If you are a student, as I mentioned above, we make free licenses available. See the academic page.

Download

You can download PSpice for TI at no cost.

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