Running Spectre



Selecting outputs

Now that everything is setup, we can select the outputs we want to plot and start the simulation. Do "Outputs | To Be Plotted | Select On Schematic". Now bring up your Schematic window and click on the wires we want to plot: "Cin", "C1_b" and "Cout". Be sure to click on the wire and not on the nodes. Clicking on nodes will produce a circle and will plot the current in the node. If you make a mistake, click on the same point again to reverse your selection. A selected wire will be visualized in a different color. Once you have all three wires selected, hit "Esc" and return to your Analog Artist window. It should now look like this:


Starting Spectre

Now start Spectre by selecting "Simulation | Run". A netlist will be produced and the transient simulation starts. You can watch the progress in your CIW window. A big plus of Spectre over other simulators is its superior speed to other simulators as well as the regular progress output that makes it easier to check on the state of a simulation.
This simulation is not very complex and should complete in a couple of seconds. The waveform window pops up as soon as the simulation is finished:

To take first simple measurements, hit "a" to activate marker A and place it for instance in the midpoint of a transition. To measure the delay to another transition, hit "b" to get the second marker. After placing both markers, the time difference is displayed at the bottom of the window.
To zoom into an area of interest, drag a box around the area with the right mouse button. To return to full view, hit "f".
To split the plot up into individual axes, select "Axes | To split".


Notes on using Spectre



Web Page created by Johannes Grad