Development of Continuation Methods for Circuit Simulation at Bell Laboratories

美国电话电报公司贝尔实验室的模拟和建模小组最近开发了一个电路模拟器，用于对其内部集成电路进行直流模拟。这种名为SFRAME的模拟器与基于牛顿-拉夫森的模拟程序(如SPICE)相比具有许多优势。这些优势包括全球收敛，能够找到电路的多个甚至所有工作点，以及能够整合贝尔实验室使用的复杂双极结晶体管模型；在包含这些模型的电路上运行SPICE会导致严重的收敛问题。这项研究将影响SFRAME的主要增强，包括初始化能力、模拟包含MOS晶体管的电路的能力，以及识别所发现的工作点的稳定性。预计这里提出的工作将是长期和富有成效的产学研合作的起点。

The Simulation and Modeling Group at AT&T Bell Laboratories has recently created a circuit simulator for dc simulation of their in- house integrated circuits. This simulator, called SFRAME has a number of advantages over Newton-Raphson-based simulation programs such as SPICE. These advantages include global convergence, the ability to find more than one or sometimes even all of a circuit's operating points, and the ability to incorporate the sophisticated bipolar junction transistor models used at Bell Laboratories; running SPICE on circuits incorporating these models has led to severe convergence problems. This research will affect major enhancements to SFRAME, including initialization capability, ability to simulate circuits containing MOS transistors, and identification of the stability of operating points found. It is expected that the work proposed herein will be a starting point for a long and productive industry-university collaboration.