Getting started with the new PSpice® for TI analog simulation tool
During this event, attendees will learn about design resources available on TI.com, including our simulation tool, PSpice® for TI. PSpice for TI makes it easier to evaluate, verify and debug analog solutions with the familiar industry-standard simulation environment from Cadence®Design Systems. It also connects seamlessly with TI.com to provide current device models and support, and is available for download at no cost. This session will provide a walkthrough of this simulation tool.
Resources
--welcome you to Industrial TI Tech Day. This is the session that is focused on getting started with the new PSpice for TI, which is a simulation and design tool. And this will be presented by Ian Williams from the LDO team. My name is Aaron Paxton. I'm also from the LDO team, and I'll be the moderator for this session.
Just want to remind you that all participants are muted for the entire session. So if you have any questions, which we encourage, please use the chat function, and I will try to relay those questions, Ian, on the spot in real time. And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Ian to get started.
Perfect. Thank you, Aaron. All right, so as Aaron said, I'm Ian Williams. I'm one of the business leads in the LDO team inside of APP's Linear Power. I'm actually fairly new to that team. I just joined this summer.
Before that, I've been in ASC and the predecessors to ASC, mainly working with amplifiers. I've done a lot of work with modeling and simulation during that time and still to this day. So I'm very passionate about simulation tools and models at TI, and I'm really excited to tell you more about PSpice for TI.
We're pretty short on time today. It's a fairly compressed session, so we'll just go ahead and get right into it. Here is what we're going to try to cover today, so 10 minutes for the overview of TI simulation tools and how PSpice for TI fits into that landscape. Then we're going to go a little bit deeper into the tool itself.
There's been some frequently asked questions about what it can and can't do, and I want to show those questions and answers. And then finally, some setup and simulation examples. And what I might do is poll the audience to see which of these might be the most popular to do because we may run out of time or not have time to do all three.
And there's a lot of reference material in the slide deck as well, which I won't cover live, but you'll be able to refer to when you download the presentation later. And as Aaron said, please ask your questions in the chat. I'll be monitoring the chat myself as well. That will be the way for you to get questions to me.
All right, so overview of TI simulation tools, and we're going to actually start with some audience participation. I have just posted a message into the chat. We're going to use Menti for a poll, an interactive poll, and all I'm asking is for you to go to that link in the chat, enter in the code, which will take you to this poll, and all you have to do is enter in a value of one through five where, if you're one, that means you have basically no experience at all with Spice simulation, and if you're a five, you are a Spice guru, or somewhere in between.
So I'll check on that in a couple of minutes, and we'll see where our audience judges themselves in terms of their Spice familiarity. But it's always interesting to see that, so please go ahead and do that. The link is in the chat.
So what is PSpice for TI? PSpice for TI, the name was chosen very deliberately. It is a co-development with Cadence Design Systems, but it is not the entire Cadence Design Suite. It is a subset of that software with the focus being on PSpice simulation. And it has the full set of standard simulation features.
You can do DCAC, noise, transient analysis. You can do all sorts of parametric stepping. You can do Monte Carlo and worst case analysis, for example. These are features that we saw a demand for, more so over time, and that some other of our free tools like TINA-TI do not support and some other industry standard free tools also don't support. So we see that as a big advantage.
Another huge advantage is that a huge, huge library of TI Spice models for TI products are included natively in the tool. So there's no need to manage a library or import models from TI.com. It's all done within the tool itself. And the software is updated automatically as updates are pushed out, and the model library is also updated automatically. So it's very easy to use with TI devices.
Despite it being a free tool, there's no design size limitations. So unlike the older PSpice student version, there's no number of notes that are a limit, you can use hierarchical schematics. There is a limitation that I'll discuss a little bit more later. If you use third party models where you can only probe a certain number of nodes at a time, but you can still simulate the full schematic in that case. But in general, it's a fully featured PSpice simulation tool.
Why are we partnering with Cadence on this, or why did we partner with Cadence? There's really a few reasons. One of the first is that Cadence PSpice as a product is really one of the industry standards for PSpice simulation. TINA is a very powerful simulator that does certain things very well, but we don't find quite as much industry adoption with TINA.
So into the future, to make ourselves more competitive and to partner with an industry leader because we are as well an industry leader in our semiconductor space, we felt that Cadence was the right option. And also, we were going to be able to offer some of these advanced features like parametric analysis, like Monte Carlo, and worst case analysis by going with Cadence in this case.
Now a common question is, is PSpice for TI replacing other tools? No, we've got TINA, we've got WEBENCH, we've got Amplifier Design Tool, Filter Design Tool, formerly known as Filter Pro, for example. Is this making all of those tools go away? And the short answer is no. At TI, we've got a large set of tools and references and resources for "TI-ers," for customer engineers, at every stage of the design process.
And so this is just an additional element in the design and simulation set of tools. You can see it added here down at the bottom. There's no plan to sunset WEBENCH or TINA-TI. Those are going to be continuing to be supported. We are just adding now--
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--to TI as another tool in a designer's tool belt.
Now if you're curious as to about what PSpice for TI offers as it stacks up to TINA, I've got a simple comparison table here showing some of the key differences where if it's green text, that means that tool is better or equivalent at least. And if it's red, it's not quite up to the other one. And you can just quickly see that PSpice for TI is more powerful and has more features in a lot of these ways here.
They can both do all the standard simulation types, but you can sweep more components because you can do true parametric sweeps as well as nested sweeps of parameters. As I mentioned before, you can do Monte Carlo and worst case analysis built in without having to write any kind of user functions. And the model library that is built in is much larger than the TINA-TI built in TI library. And it's also going to be updated much more frequently and automatically.
So, Ian, there's a question that says, is there anything I can't do with PSpice that I can do with TINA-TI?
I can't think of anything off the top of my head. The only thing that I would say is that TINA has a couple of features that users of TINA appreciate, which is the fact that a TINA project is all in one file. It's a .tsc file, and TINA is kind of more monolithic in that everything you need to run the simulation, any models that are used, the schematic itself, it's all in one file.
So it's very easy to share, you don't have to manage different libraries or projects, whereas PSpice, there's a lot more files. You have a project file, two files for each model, so it can be a little more cumbersome to manage that way. That's one thing that's in TINA's favor.
The other thing, which I would say is very minor, is that it has some virtual lab bench type components, like a virtual oscilloscope and a virtual function generator, for example. Some old school analog guys I know like using those, but again, all the actual analysis is effectively the same. So I hope that answers your question. That's what I can think of off the top of my head.
All right, I want to keep cruising along here. Let's see, 10 minutes in, I think we're doing OK so far. Actually, we're right on time.
So getting a little more into the details about PSpice for TI itself which, as you can see from the tip, does run offline. If you're using the full version of PSpice that we have internally as "TI-ers," that uses a licensed server. So you have to be online and on the TI VPN if you're going to use the full version of PSpice. So you don't have to do that for PSpice for TI. It just runs offline, don't need the VPN or anything like that.
I see another question. Can I import from TINA to PSpice? If you're talking about a schematic, the answer is no. They are a different type of program in that regard.
What you could do is you could export a net list, the text file of the circuit, from TINA. And as long as it was fully contained, all the models and sub circuits and everything were included in it and it used the same syntax as PSpice, which for the most part, they are the same, then you could run that in PSpice. But you wouldn't be able to import a schematic from TINA into PSpice and start working on that same schematic in PSpice. You'd have to redraw it, but you could run it in PSpice.
OK, thank you guys for the questions. Keep them coming.
How do I install it? It's really easy. We have a URL for it at TI.com/pspice-for-ti. You just have to request it. So there's a couple steps. You put in your basic info in this form that comes up here just for US government regulations, and then you get an email shortly after, which gives you a unique link you can see here in blue that you click to actually download the installer.
And then once you start that installer running, it'll prompt you for an access key, which-- this was the one it gave me at the time. This one has since timed out because they do last 30 days, but you would follow that process. Just copy and paste this into the tool, and it will install itself from a web server. So the download at the first point is partial, and then it'll download some more files as you run the installer.
I did mention that it works offline already. I did mention that there are no number of node limitations, as well as multi-page and hierarchical blocks that are supported. The other limit which I've also hinted at before is this is intended to be used primarily as a TI tool using TI models or other primitive models like your RLCs, switches, controlled sources, independent sources, your basic analog and mixed signal components. If you use third party models or if you write your own sub circuits that are then imported, that would be considered a third party model as well.
There's no problem to do that. You can still use them in your simulation, but you'll only be able to probe three measurements at a time. So let's say you've got two inputs and an output in your particular circuit. You want to probe them all at the same time. That's three, that's fine. But if you have two inputs, two outputs, you can only probe any three of those at once.
Now you can run the sim again and probe three different ones. There's ways to work around it, but you won't be able to measure more than three nodes simultaneously. That is the primary limitation in this tool.
Now again, one of the big, big selling points of the tool is the built-in TI model library, and we'll go into the user interface a little bit later when I give some examples. But it shows up here on the right side of the screen and it matches the type product tree. So if you're familiar with the structure of our organization of products as I'm sure most of you are, it will match that, and you can simply drill down the list to get to the type of part you want.
Now I will say we don't have every product in the tool. Excuse me, let me back up a second. Every model, every PSpice model that currently exists on TI.com, is not yet in the tool. We have about 6,000 of them in already, but some existing ones need a little bit of more work to be packaged in a way that was friendly to be moved into the tool.
So that's still an ongoing process that all the different BUs are doing. We do have a goal of getting parity between the tool and the web as soon as possible. And also, all new models when they're published, the same process to publish them gets them in both places at the same time. So all new models are going to the tool no matter what, but it might take a little bit of time before there's full parity.
OK, I've got some questions here. Support on Linux, I can't speak to that. I would have to look that up. Using Wine, which if I understand correctly is basically a Windows emulator or a Windows virtual machine. I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I'll have to check on that. Please reiterate limitations on third party models.
So if you import any third party models, you can only probe three nodes at a time. So for example, I've got this VCM node, I've got a V out node, and I've got a VS node. If this was a third party model, I could probe all of those at a time and see what those voltages were doing, but if for example I wanted to probe those three voltages and a current, I wouldn't be able to do that all at the same time. I'd have to do it over different runs.
Multiple processor support, so Cadence does support multiple processors. This came up in another training. Cadence didn't have a perfect answer as to how it scales with multiple processors or multiple cores if you're on a big workstation, but what they did say was that the time base nature of the simulation if it's a transient, which tends to be the longest time, doesn't necessarily scale with more cores as it does with processor speed.
So it's not a linear scaling, but it will take advantage of multiple cores. I just can't really quantify how much benefit you'll actually see. It's probably on a case by case basis.
All right, beautiful thing is how easy it is to update the model library. So whenever you launch the tool and you're online, it will check to see if your library matches the latest, and if you are on an older version you'll get this popup window here you can see on the top right that asks you if you want to apply the latest updates.
Now, you have the option not to, which is nice, but if you choose to do so, you can just click Yes. And it will update, just download through the web using the same tool. You don't have to leave the tool to do it. And so you can easily do it that way.
And also the way the models are stored on your hard drive is really-- so they're not in some big encrypted file or any kind of archive. They're just all in a particular folder on your hard drive under this SPB_Data folder in your root directory. And those .lib files, for example, are the net list for each model. You can take those and you can copy them somewhere else on your computer. Or you can import them into other simulators if you like.
Those are just standard net lists, so you can do what you like with them. You can also edit them if you want, but if you edit a model and you're using it in PSpice for TI, it will no longer be detected as a signed model. So it'll be treated as third party. And also next time you go to update the library, it will get overwritten if you've saved it with the same name because it will say that that's different than the latest one that it has on the server.
So you can edit models. You can just use a text editor because these are text files, but my suggestion is if you do edit them and you're still using them in this tool, save them as a new part number and re-import them. Otherwise, you may accidentally overwrite it next time you update the library.
OK, other than the built in model library, a really neat thing that this tool has is what's called the modeling application. This is something that Cadence implemented after we gave a lot of feedback that, especially for power devices like power diodes and power FETs, not being able to import third party models would be really a deal breaker. So what they've done is given us this application where you can implement customizable devices of a bunch of different types that are quite handy, and I'll show where you get to it in the tool. But we also got it here for reference.
It's under the Place menu. Again, it's called Modeling Application, and none of these trigger the limitation on simultaneous probes. It's quite easy to use. Each type of part has its own user interface, so you can just select that type of part. Here's an example with the MOSFET. You have a bunch of parameters which you can edit, and then once you place it, that part has been instantiated on the schematic. And you can still edit those parameters, or you can make them variables, use them in expressions however you like. And it won't trigger the node limit.
All the standard Spice libraries are included too. I won't go through all this right now, but it's here for you to reference. But for example, an analog, that's where all of your passives are including sources, switches, and transmission lines. [INAUDIBLE] Sources are where your independent voltage and current sources are. So typically your inputs come from here, and a bunch of other useful stuff in the other libraries. So these are all considered native libraries. None of these trigger the probe limit.
If you do want to import a third party model, you can do so. It works a little bit differently than the full version of PSpice if you've used it before. This does not include the Model Editor Utility. Instead here, you go through it from the Tools menu. There's a menu called Generate Part, so I'll just leave this here for reference. And that's how you import a third party model.
And I get this kind of question a lot, just to clarify the different types of models that you'll find on TI.com. PSpice and TINA-TI, for the most part, are pretty interchangeable. It's the same core model file in there. A model file is a text file. It's a net list, is another term for it. And the only difference between the PSpice and TINA-TI version in most cases is just how the files are packaged up to be easier to import into one or the other. The core file under them is usually the same.
Now sometimes, a model might be encrypted and when it's encrypted, it is limited to use in one particular simulator or another. So a PSpice encrypted model will only be able to be interpreted by PSpice, but in general, as a company we're moving away from unencrypted models. There's an effort to, along with importing them into the built in PSpice for TI library, there's a similar effort to make them all unencrypted. So most that you run into should be unencrypted nowadays.
Other types of models are HSPICE, which is a different branch of Spice. We don't use this too much in TI, but I have seen a few models released like this. These are not necessarily compatible right away with PSpice. You might have to edit syntax to make them work. SIMPLIS is a type of model that's intended to be used with SIMPLIS software.
This software is optimized for use with switch-mode power supply, so it is just a different beast than Spice. So they are not cross compatible. And then finally, you'll also see IBIS models, especially on a lot of our digital parts. These are mainly used for digital pin timing. They can be converted to Spice because they often describe buffers and parasitics on the pins, but that would take a little bit of effort as well. It's not a straightforward conversion.
OK, I see another question. Support for healthy SPICE extensions, such as UpLim, DnLim of B sources. How many existing macro models with these? So PSpice in general does not support B sources at all, whether it's the paid tool or the free tool. So any sources that are a B type would not work. But the limits are so it depends on the syntax.
And a lot of models that I've made, for example, do use the upper and lower limits, which I believe is what you're referring to. But you'd have to use it a different way, like with a value defined voltage or current source instead of an arbitrary B source. So it might still take a little bit of work, but the limit function does work.
OK, so that's the end of the first two sections. We're going to get into the examples, but before we do, I want to see if we got some inputs on our poll. Oh, cool, yes, we did. So we have one person brave enough to call themselves a guru. That's awesome, two that can't spell SPICE. Well it's spelled S-P-I-C-E, so you know for next time. But welcome, I'm glad you're learning more about SPICE. And then quite a few in the mix skewing a little bit towards less experienced. So again, welcome to the training and glad that you are here and looking for more information about simulation tools.
I see another question. What do you mean by B type? Here, let me go back to my libraries. OK, so here in the analog library, you have what are called dependent sources. So for example, voltage-controlled current sources, voltage-controlled voltage sources, as well as current-controlled current sources, and current-controlled voltage sources, so all those four different combinations. You can make them do whatever you want, and they're fully ideal. So the voltage sources have a zero output impedance, and the current sources have an infinite output impedance.
So you can use them as buffers and play all kinds of fun games with them. The letters that describe those are e, f, g, and h. Those are the reference designators. B is something that's only done in LTSPICE as far as I know, and it's an arbitrary source. It can do similar stuff to the types of sources I just mentioned before, but it's a little more generic. You can build more with it, but again, all that same stuff can still be done with the right type of source in PSpice as well.
So just to stay on track of time here, we're going to go back to the Setup and simulation examples. And so I'm just going to ask you in chat, going to scroll back to here. So I have three examples ready, one with an op amp, one with a power supply, which is an LDO, of course, and then a third one using the modeling application.
So if you just say something like op amp or LDO, or FET in the chat, please let me know your top choice of which one to use. And I'll just wait a second and see what you say. We'll do an unscientific poll here.
All right, I see one for modeling, one for op amp. One for modeling, FET, OK. FET, op amp, op amp, OK, so it looks like op amp or FET. So let's start with op amp, and then we'll do FET. And then that should be about time, so that will work out. Thank you, everybody, for telling me your preference.
All right, so let's get into the tool. Here's what it looks like when you open it up. You get this start page, and I will highly recommend that if you are new to the PSpice tool or the Cadence tool you check out the training course. I put a link to it in the slides as well, but it is a full lab manual with examples step by step that covers all the basics and intermediate functions of the tool with some great examples. So I highly recommend you check that out.
Otherwise, it's fairly straightforward. You've got some links to support, including E2E, where we do support questions about the tool. And again, the built in TI model library is in here under Texas Instruments. Other parts are in their respective sections as well. You can get to them other ways too, but this is definitely the main place if you want to look for TI components.
So I've already made a dummy project that doesn't have anything in it just to save one step, but that's it. And so if we want to try a power MOSFET, for example, and look at this modeling application, again, it's under Place, PSpice component, and then Modeling application. So that changes what you see here.
And again, you can expand down to see the different types. You might wonder why capacitor and inductor are in here because those are pretty basic components, but those are including some parasitics. If you want to get into ESR and things like that, that can affect your behavior.
So I see a question. Is there a suggestion box for more modeling application parts, such as something like an ideal op amp? I don't know if there's a suggestion box, but if you do have feedback, we can take it. You can instantiate a ideal op amp with features that you can edit from within basic PSpice too. I believe it's under analog, but you can change offset, gain, bandwidth, [? C ?] rate, some basic components like that. So that does exist and is parameterized.
OK, so if I want to use a power MOSFET coming back here, I'll just click this. That opens up the interface, and it gives you some basic instructions. You can select all your parameters. You've got quite a few parameters being modeled here. And then to place the component once you're happy with the values, just press place. That attaches it to your cursor. You can see it's following my cursor around.
Then you click again to actually instantiate it. And I can zoom in by holding Control down and using scroll wheel. So I'm just using that to scroll in and around. I see a question, how to open the modeling application window? Again, it is Place, PSpice component, Modeling application.
But you'll see, once it's open it stays open. If I want to open a power diode, for example, I just click it. I want to open a source. The source window is pretty cool. This looks kind of like what Tina had where it shows you an example of the waveform and some descriptions of what the different parameters are.
So you can see, there's different types of wave forms here. This makes it a little bit easier to instantiate different types of waveforms than having to know what all of these things mean because sometimes the shorthand is a little bit cryptic. So, easy way to get different sources in here.
Now I did mention that all these components are parameterized. So what that means is you can still edit anything in the component after it's been put on the schematic. And to get to its properties, you simply double-click the symbol and you can see all the properties in here. All of these properties, the different capacitances, for example, RDSON, these are all editable from here directly. So if I wanted to change my RDSON, I could just type a different number in there.
Or I could make the parameter itself visible on my schematic, and I can edit it from the schematic. So for example, I'll just use RDSON. I click the name of it to select it. Then I right-click and select Display because I want to see the display properties. And if I want to show the name and value on the schematic, I can click this. Now, click OK. I'll do a quick Control+S to Save and close that to go back to my schematic.
Now you can see RDSON is here in my schematic. So I can double-click that, change it to one, whatever I want. And now it's easily editable from the schematic. I can also parameterize it by using curly braces. So if I want to arbitrarily make that a parameter that I can then sweep or do different stuff here, then I can do that.
It is grayed out. I see your question in the chat. You have to have a project open and be on a schematic page like this. So if you haven't made a project yet, you'll have to make a project. Then, it should not be grayed out, and here, let's just test that. So I'll close this, I'll close my project. Place, Component, yeah, it's grayed out. So you have to be in a project first.
I believe I've deleted it before saving it, but that's fine. Oh, no, it's still there. OK, so I must have saved. Let me show you an example of how you can-- the default seems to extend to the right in an illegible manner. Aha, yes, this is a pro tip that I don't always remember to say. So by default, it looks like this, and it goes off to the right quite a long ways. So what I like to do is click Pivot, which kind of transposes it so that it's organized vertically, much more easy to see. Good question.
All right, so I'm going to open a little precooked project that I made just testing two different power MOSFETs that are each instantiated with the modeling application. So I just selected it from my recent projects, and here it is. Let's see, I'm going to zoom in, zoom to region, and then I'm going to click and drag to zoom in right here. There we go.
And this looks more complicated than it is because I'm doing a trick to kind of buffer and duplicate some voltages in my circuit. But if you just look up here first, this is a basic FET test circuit where you are applying different Vgs and Vds so gate source and drain source voltages, while measuring the current through drain source. And you get the very classic FET curves of IV that way.
So this is the default nmos with the basic RDSON of 59 milliohms. And I'll show you how I set it up in a second, but I'm doing a double sweep where I'm stepping Vgs and stepping Vds. And in each run, I'm measuring IDS and I'm doing it through this source. There's not a built in ammeter in PSpice, which the same as in LTSPICE. TINA does have one. But I'm just putting this dummy source here that's not doing anything. It's just zero volts, and I'm using it just so I can measure the current through it.
So I'm doing that up here. And then down here I've got another power nmos, but I've changed RDSON to one ohm, so it should be a lot less current for the same voltage. And I am buffering these voltages for Vgs and Vds that are coming from up here. So when I place this text here, this is called a net alias, it basically acts like a wire. So whenever I place it anywhere else, it will short those two nets together.
So this voltage is now shorted here, and this source is a voltage-controlled voltage source, which just takes whatever voltage it gets here, plus and minus, and then outputs it on the right side reference to this negative node, which is ground. So right now, it's a gain of one, so just basically copying whatever I've put over here over here and all the impedances are isolated from one another. So I'm just applying the same Vgs here without having to use another source. That's all the trick is there.
And I'm doing the exact same thing over here. So I've got Vds1. That's being applied to this same wire here. This controlled source is mirrored, so the inputs are now on the right and the outputs are on the left. And I'm also measuring my ideas through this source. So I don't see any questions. Hopefully I explain that well enough.
Now, I want to do a DC sweep to see the IV characteristics. To create or edit your simulation profile, use these two buttons up here. This is to make a new sim profile. This one is to edit the sim profile. And you don't need to do too much to do this, but I do want to do a primary and secondary sweep. So under Analysis Type, I've got DC Sweep. Here are the other types you can use. My primary sweep is to sweep Vds which is the exact name of this source. It's not a generic name.
And it's a voltage source. That's all I need to put up here. And then I want to do a linear sweep from zero to five volts in 0.01 or 10 millivolt increments, so a pretty granular sweep there. And then my secondary sweep is Vgs, which is the name of this source. Same kind of thing, linear sweep from two to five and one volt step. So it's going to go two, three, four, five.
One other tip under the Probe window, I highly suggest you use last plot because if you do this, then all the work you set up to make your different probe results look nice and show you the data that you want, that will preserve all that between runs. If you change it to nothing or all markers on open schematics, anytime you modify your results window, which is a separate window, it'll get reset whenever you run the next sim. So I suggest keeping it on last plot, which just keeps the last thing you had in terms of the settings.
OK, so let's run it. It's this play button here. And we'll see what we get. Again, it's going to pop up in another window because that's how this works. Here it is. All right, and so what it's showing me is what I had done last plot. And I was showing someone how you can use this expression just to create, in this case, just a difference of one current minus another current. But I don't want to see that anymore, so I'm going to select this top plot, right-click, and say delete plot. And that will get rid of that whole top plot pane.
And here, it's showing me the current through the component Vmeas1, which is this, so just a current flowing through here. That's this green curve and that's the part with the lower RDSON, so you can see it's much higher current for the same bias voltages. And then the red plot is i of Vmeas2. So again, that's the one copied down here with the higher RDSON, and it's a much lower current. So here's the Vds step. This is current on the y-axis, and then each step here is different Vgs, so two, three, four, five volts.
OK, I got another question here. License question, my company has Cadence Allegro floating license, but no Cadence PSpice full license. So I use Cadence free PSpice license. But If I installed PSpice for TI would I not be able to use Cadence Lite PSpice license? How can I use PSpice for TI and Cadence Lite PSpice on the same PC?
So I'm not that familiar with Cadence Lite specifically, but I do know that PSpice for TI works completely fine and is fully compatible with all other versions of PSpice. So you can work in a project in PSpice for TI and then open that same project on the same computer or a different computer using a full version of Cadence or perhaps Cadence Lite. Again, I'm sorry, I don't know the full details or limitations of Cadence Lite, but that is a big advantage here.
So you can't use this tool, for example, for PCB layout like you can in full paid Cadence, the industrial version. But you can start here with your schematic, run your simulations, verify the simulation works well, use Monte Carlo analysis to check your tolerances over all kinds of conditions, and then when you're happy with the design, you can import it into [INAUDIBLE] You can just simply open it in full Cadence and proceed with your PCB layout.
OK, so I covered a lot of nuts and bolts of how to use the tool as well with this question. I'll just show another op amp example quickly. I'm going to close this project. I don't want to save anything. Back to my dummy project, so I want to show functionality here of the library. So for example, let's look at op amps, under Amplifiers, op amps.
The part that I had in mind is Precision op amp. So when I click that, you see all the-- I'm going to expand this a bit. All these op amps populate down here, [INAUDIBLE] PAs, LMPs, et cetera, a lot of parts. If you want to find a part by scrolling, you can. If you want to find a part by searching, you also can. So I want to look at OPA 211. Press Enter to search. I always forget that doesn't work. You got to click this, and now it finds the part.
From here, if you right-click, you can do a bunch of stuff. You can place the symbol, which just places a schematic symbol right on your schematic if you want to wire up your circuit from scratch. Or you can do other things, like add it to your favorites, which makes it show up in a short list of favorites up here. Or you can open a reference design. We're actually going to rename this to be a test circuit, which I think is a little more accurate as opposed to a reference design. But you can simply click this, and it'll open a test circuit that a TI engineer has made to get you up and running.
Now it looks like it didn't change because I haven't opened the schematic for it yet. The project opened up over here, but the schematic is down here. And here it is, so it is a test circuit, in this case, a simple non-inverting gain of one buffer configuration with split power supplies and some RL load and a sign plus AC input, as well as the sim profile already set up. So you can simply start from this, click a button and run a sim, and edit it from there if you needed to do something slightly different.
So I see another question. Problem with TINA and LTSPICE, error log references net list, nodes that are not always are ever annotated on the schematic can't be searched. How does PSpice for TI deal with such debug issues? So I actually really like the error log function in PSpice. I think that's one of its strengths. If I did something goofy and had a floating node or had a loop, or I didn't have a parameter specified or something like that, in this window here, which is the actual PSpice simulation, you would get an error log down here. And this actually prints to a .log file.
Everything here matches quite well to the schematic and aliases like this, if I come back here, like for example this. I don't know what this is, but this is the out node. I've named it out. You can see it there. It's recognizing the name is out. So that is searchable, and if I get an error here that's talking about out, I can search it and it should match. And it'll automatically name stuff. Like for example, this is n12799.
That's searchable as well. Components and everything are searchable. . What if you have not named it? Well, if you've not named it, it'll give it an automatic name that's usually n and a bunch of numbers. But components are searchable through the reference designators and everything like that, so it's usually pretty searchable.
Must roll over to see which on the schematic? Yes, you must. So you have to work back and forth between the two windows. That's just a consequence of how PSpice works. All right, so I'll just roll through this quickly because we're running out of time. I see everyone's still sticking around, so that's great. If I just wanted to run the built in analysis, here it is. It's a transient analysis. Let me slide this down a little bit again so you can see it a bit bigger. And I'm just looking at the input and the output, and it's a non-inverting gain of one, very low offset.
So you see the result there. If I wanted to do something different, like plot an AC transfer function to check the gain bandwidth of this part, for example, I've already got an AC source to find. So I can, for example, add a new simulation profile. I'll call it AC. I do want to overwrite. And all I need to do is select an AC sweep. Usually you want it to be logarithmic, and I'll start from 1 Hertz to 100 Meg with 20 points per decade. I don't want to do noise in this case. So we'll just say OK, and let's run that.
So it's run, but it hasn't shown me anything yet because I haven't told it what I want to see yet. So I will right-click and say add trace. Now when you're using [INAUDIBLE] you typically want to see things in terms of dB for magnitude and degrees for phase. So for example, I'll just go back here, if I take this probe and I just slap this probe on the output, it'll show me what looks like an AC transfer function for magnitude, but it is going to be in linear units. It's just in bolts.
That might be fine. One volt per volt is 0 dB. But if I want to actually see this in dB, I can do it a couple of different ways. There's this dB function on the right side with a bunch of other operators and functions that are very helpful. So I can either just type dB parentheses. It's like a coding function. And then v of out, and that'll show me in dB. You can see the y-axis updated. Or you can build it by clicking dB, and then you can find it in the list here. So it's just called out. So it would be-- where is it? Vout and it goes inside just like that, and it'll show you the same thing.
So that's the magnitude, and if you wanted to see phase in degrees, for example, on another plot, I could right-click and say Add plot. That creates a new plot pane. Now I want to still see Vout, but the phase in degrees. So I'll say add trace, then the function is P for phase. And then Vout again. I lost it in the list. There it is.
There you go. So I've got no phase shift throughout low and mid frequencies, and then my phase shift starts to happen at the high frequency pulls when the amplifier starts to run out of bandwidth, and I've got about 100 degrees of phase shift at 100 megahertz.
How do you import a third party SPICE model? I see some questions here. So use the tool. Where is it? I had it in my notes here. Tools, Generate Part, so use it like that. That's how you point to a model file. This version of PSpice is available to anyone to download for free. Yes, you don't have to be an employee of TI. You can be a student, you can be a hobbyist, you can be any person in the world. You can just request it from TI.com/pspice-for-ti.
And finally, my results appear very quickly. Is this due to low design complexity, or can I expect PSpice for TI to compute quickly? So that's a consequence of several things. Yes, it is a simple circuit. I also have a pretty fast brand new laptop that I was just given this past summer. So it's a new machine with a good bit of RAM good processor speed. And also, this model was developed to be both accurate and convergence friendly. So it's kind of a perfect situation all around. Your results may vary.
Yes, I am the Williams from Green Williams lists. But in general, these will compute fast. I think it should be about on par with TINA, but again, it depends on your local machine. So I know I've gone over time. I just want to show one last thing before we go, and I just want to point you to all the reference material that I put together here. So you can download these slides from our internal SharePoint after the session.
But I'll link to the training course, which actually is quite good. It's a downloadable PDF that's a full step by step lab manual as well. We've got a bunch of training videos available on the TI website with links inside the PowerPoints.
And I've got an article series where I talk about how you verify the behavior of your models before you trust them and use them in your designs. So there's four parts to that. These are on EDN, which cover different aspects of an amplifier. We do support this tool ourselves through our E2E forums. So if you have any questions about the tool, feel free to post it. TI engineers are watching, and we are making sure to respond in a timely and professional and quick and correct manner.
So we will support your needs there. And Finally, I just have a bunch of tips that you can read through for reference. These are kind of modeling based, but a lot of them can apply to your basic circuits, subsystem and circuit design as well.
So I'll take a breath. Let's see, no more questions? Thank you everybody for your questions. I hope this was a productive session. It has been recorded, so the recording will be available, the slides will be available. I did hide quite a few slides, just interest of time, so you can see more information in the deck. Thank you again for attending. I know I have to show this to be legal, so there you go. And thank you very much. Bye-bye.