XicTools is a collection of electronic design automation software centred on Xic and WRspice. Xic is a graphical editor for integrated circuit layouts and schematics, while WRspice is a SPICE-derived circuit simulator.
The suite has a long development history and includes tools for circuit simulation, physical layout, device extraction, routing, Verilog simulation, and related electronic design tasks. Xic and WRspice were originally commercial applications before being released as open source.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Xic graphical editor for creating, displaying, and editing integrated circuit layouts and schematics.
- Provides design-rule checking, circuit extraction, and other physical-design facilities.
- WRspice is a SPICE-derived circuit simulator for analysing electronic circuits.
- Supports graphical interfaces built with Qt 5 and Qt 6, alongside the older GTK2 interface.
- Runs on Linux and can also be built on macOS and Windows.
- Includes FastCap for capacitance extraction from conductor geometries.
- Includes FastHenry for inductance and resistance extraction.
- MRouter provides maze-routing functionality and can operate independently or as an Xic plugin.
- Includes an integrated Verilog simulator which can also operate as a standalone non-graphical application.
- Provides an ADMS wrapper for generating runtime-loadable device models for WRspice.
- Supports the KLU sparse matrix package as an optional runtime module for improving WRspice simulation performance.
- Offers integrated schematic and physical-layout workflows for integrated circuit design.
- Includes shared libraries and configuration infrastructure used throughout the XicTools suite.
- Can be compiled from source using standard Linux development tools and either Qt or GTK libraries.
- Users can track the stable master branch or the development branch and rebuild the suite as required.
- The build system can generate installable packages as well as directly install compiled programs.
Website: github.com/wrcad/xictools
Support:
Developer: Stephen R. Whiteley / Whiteley Research Incorporated
License: Apache License 2.0
XicTools is written mainly in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Backend Electronic Circuit Simulators | |
|---|---|
| ngspice | SPICE simulator for electric and electronic circuits |
| Xyce | SPICE-compatible analog circuit simulator |
| SPICE OPUS | General purpose circuit simulator specially suited for optimization loops |
| SPICE | General-purpose circuit simulation program |
| CIDER | Mixed-level circuit and device simulator |
| Gnucap | General purpose circuit simulator |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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