An Interview with Mike Engelhardt (Re-broadcast)
Mike Engelhardt, creator of LTSpice, explains that he developed the simulator at Linear Technology to provide a competitive advantage for IC design, leveraging numerical methods like self-authoring assembly code to run the pipeline hot. He details how LTSpice differs from Berkeley Spice by fixing discontinuities in semiconductor IV curves and implementing specialized models for power MOSFETs, such as the VD MOS charge model. Engelhardt also discusses the complexity of modeling controllers like the LTC3780 using mixed-mode simulation and advises users on solver settings, TRtol, and Gmin to handle convergence issues in difficult circuits.