EDLICS: a new relaxation-based electrical circuit simulation technique

Event-Driven Local-Interactive Circuit Simulation (EDLICS) is a new approach to the transient simulation of electrical circuits. Unlike the simulation methods which are based on differential equations, EDLICS directly models the physical behavior of electrical components. The EDLICS approach propagates incremental changes in circuit variables (voltage, current, and charge) as events similar to the behavior of event-driven logic simulation. An electrical component receives an event (either voltage, current, or charge) from a node, converts it to another event and delivers it to a neighboring node. The transient behavior of a circuit is analyzed by evaluating capacitors with current flow for charge buildup. EDLICS is the generalization of relaxation-based simulation, although it originated in a different perspective. The Kirchhoff Current Law, Kirchhoff Voltage Law, and capacitor current integration formula are used interactively in the Gauss-Seidel fashion. Since EDLICS is based on the true behavior modeling of electrical components, it is capable of handling circuit components and circuit configurations which other relaxation-based simulators cannot. The EDLICS technique is applied to a MOS circuit simulator, EDsim. EDsim is one to two orders of magnitude faster than the latest version of SPICE3 and compares favorably with iSPLICE3