SPC-101 · Digital Design & Silicon · Practitioner
Circuit Simulation & SPICE Analysis — full syllabus
Reason about analog behaviour instead of guessing: build circuits in SPICE, run the analyses that matter, and know when a simulation is lying to you.
Who this course is for
Hardware and embedded engineers who need to reason about analog behaviour rather than guess at it, and digital engineers who have to interface with analog blocks.
Prerequisites
- Basic electronics: Ohm's law, RC circuits, transistors as switches
- Comfort reading a schematic
- No SPICE experience required
Course outline
Day 1 — SPICE fundamentals and DC analysis
- Netlists, nodes, device models and how the solver actually works
- DC operating point: .op and reading the bias report
- DC sweeps and transfer functions: .dc and .tf
- Convergence failures: gmin stepping, source stepping, and what they mean
Day 2 — Transient and AC analysis
- Transient analysis: timestep control, accuracy vs runtime, and simulation artefacts
- RC and RL transients, switch-mode behaviour, startup inrush
- AC analysis: gain and phase, poles and zeros, phase margin
- Compensating a feedback loop, and reading a Bode plot properly
Day 3 — Corners, noise and signal integrity
- Monte Carlo and worst-case corner simulation
- Noise analysis: thermal, shot, flicker — and reading a noise budget
- Parasitics, transmission lines and termination
- Model quality: where vendor models mislead, and how to verify one
Hands-on labs
- Lab: build and simulate a bias network, then explain every entry in the operating-point report
- Lab: reproduce a convergence failure deliberately and fix it three different ways
- Lab: simulate a switching supply's startup and find the inrush that stresses the input
- Lab: measure phase margin on a feedback amplifier and compensate it for stability
- Lab: run a Monte Carlo sweep and identify which component dominates the output spread
Capstone project
Simulate a real circuit you care about — a power supply, a filter, a sensor front end — from DC through transient and AC, across corners and with noise, then write the engineering note you would hand a colleague: what the simulation proves, what it assumes, and where it cannot be trusted.
What you leave with
- Working fluency with DC, transient and AC analyses
- The judgement to know when a simulation result is an artefact
- Corner and Monte Carlo practice for real component tolerances
- A healthy suspicion of vendor models, and a way to check one
Upcoming dates
| Dates | Where | Seats | Early bird | Regular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Nov – 29 Nov 20266 half-days | Gulf bandLive online · 14:00–18:00 GST | 14 of 20 | US$1,580until 23 Oct | ||
| 30 Nov – 7 Dec 20266 half-days | Europe bandLive online · 14:00–18:00 CET | 3 of 20 | US$1,580until 31 Oct | ||
| 30 Nov – 7 Dec 20266 half-days | Americas bandLive online · 13:00–17:00 ET | 8 of 20 | US$1,580until 31 Oct | ||
| 8 Nov – 10 Nov 20263 full days | RiyadhIn person · KAFD Conference Centre | 12 of 14 | — | SAR 9,000 | |
| 15 Nov – 17 Nov 20263 full days | Kuwait CityIn person · Al Hamra Tower | 7 of 14 | US$2,160until 16 Oct | ||
| 22 Nov – 24 Nov 20263 full days | MuscatIn person · Knowledge Oasis Muscat | 12 of 14 | US$2,160until 23 Oct | ||
| 23 Nov – 25 Nov 20263 full days | OttawaIn person · Kanata North Tech Park | 7 of 14 | CAD 2,930until 24 Oct | ||
| 30 Nov – 2 Dec 20263 full days | TorontoIn person · MaRS Discovery District | 12 of 14 | CAD 2,930until 31 Oct | ||
| 7 Dec – 9 Dec 20263 full days | LondonIn person · Shoreditch Works | 7 of 14 | GBP 1,680until 7 Nov | ||
| 7 Dec – 9 Dec 20263 full days | BerlinIn person · Factory Görlitzer Park | 12 of 14 | EUR 1,990until 7 Nov |
Book a seat, or bring this course to your team
Seats can be reserved online; private delivery runs on-site or live online, adapted to your stack.
Questions about fit or prerequisites? Email [email protected]. To save this syllabus, print this page to PDF from your browser.