Hardware Podcasts

QSPICE Circuit Simulation: A Spicy Discussion with Mike Engelhardt

Moore's Lobby · 30 Jul 2024 · 55m · Episode 15

What this episode covers

Mike Engelhardt, creator of LTspice and now QSPICE at Qorvo, explains how he built circuit simulation tools starting from his work in physics labs and oil exploration. He details the rapid development of LTspice in 10 months to serve as sales collateral for Linear Technology, emphasizing that simulation's primary value is building engineer intuition rather than just verification. Engelhardt then describes refactoring the open-source Berkeley SPICE code to create QSPICE, which fixes bugs in the sparse matrix package and leverages GPUs for waveform plotting rather than computation to handle wide bandgap semiconductors like GaN and SiC.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies and companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Linear Technology, Qorvo
Products
LTspice, QSPICE, Berkeley SPICE
Chips
GaN, SiC

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