[Info-gnucap] gnucap development snapshot 2008-02-11

[al davis]

There is a new development snapshot available ... 
http://gnucap.org/devel/gnucap-2008-03-24.tar.gz

Models (optional) have also been updated, fixing some attachment 
problems:
http://gnucap.org/devel/gnucap-2008-03-24-models-bsim.tar.gz
http://gnucap.org/devel/gnucap-2008-03-24-models-ngspice17.tar.gz
http://gnucap.org/devel/gnucap-2008-03-24-models-spice3f5.tar.gz

Another optional package contains some tools.  There are no 
changes, but there is a new one for consistency.
http://gnucap.org/devel/gnucap-2008-03-24-tools.tar.gz

This snapshot provides mostly clean-up and bug fixes.

There is one new feature.  It now accepts parameters 
on ".subckt" lines, with Spice syntax.  The old ".param" syntax 
still works.

Some bug fixes:

Temperature mapping with multiple devices with spice-model 
plugins.

"sin" frequency default is now the same as Spice.

Bring back "get", "merge", "build" (in the last snapshot, they 
only worked with dots.)


Comments:

This is still very much a development snapshot, and should not 
be included in any distribution or CD.

Performance with spice model plugins is very slow.  The 
copy-in-copy-out mapping does have some speed penalty, but the 
speed is much slower than it should be.  Also, convergence is 
not what it should be, which slows it down more.  As it stands, 
the spice model plugins do not support any of the "fast-spice" 
ability that gnucap has.  Fixing this is high priority, before 
a stable release, but after a feature freeze.

Plugins using the spice-wrapper still do not take named 
parameters, or expressions.

As usual, to get started you need only the main package 
gnucap-2008-xx-xx.tar.gz .  The other "models" packages contain 
the exact models from the various sources.  If you need a jfet, 
I recommend the one in "spice3f5".  If you need a BSIM model, 
the obvious choice is the "bsim" package, which has all of 
them.  The "ngspice17" package contains a few models not 
available elsewhere, such as "vbic".

If you need other models, let me know.  Others, such as 
Josephson junction, are available, but I have not ported them 
yet.  Porting a Spice model usually requires two files, 
a "Makefile" and a "wrapper.h", and no other changes.