## A First, Complicated Project at Circuit Design with NG-SPICE

One subject which I wrote about in an earlier posting, was that software exists by the name of ‘SPICE’, which stands for “Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis”. There are several variants of this software in existence, but the version which I am focusing on for now is the Open-Source ‘NG-SPICE’ system, which needs to be bundled with numerous other packages under Linux, really to be useful. One important package is ‘ngspice-doc’, but there is a whole suite of Linux packages referred to as ‘gEDA’.

Simply having tested a few demo-projects, is not the same thing as actually having designed a circuit, and having witnessed that project ‘work’, at least according to the simulation. Just last night, I did the latter, in order to get a better, working grasp of how to use the software, and also, some idea of the sort of error messages and problems which invariably occur on a first-time basis. What this means is that I actually designed a circuit using the ‘gEDA Schemtic Editor’, which is also known as ‘gschem’, and then ran multiple simulations of the circuit, discovering at first that it had performance issues as I had imagined it, modifying it numerous times, and ending up with a version of the circuit, which I could be satisfied with for now.

The circuit which I was designing, actually involved MOSFETs, because those are the most important components in circuit-design today, and surely enough, I did run into initial problems. One of the tasks which we must complete, when using active components in SPICE, is to define the component, which is as fundamental as the fact that we also don’t just put a resistor, but must also specify what the Value of the resistor is in Ohms. Well with active components, we must do something similar, which also goes under the GUI heading of the Value attribute for the component. Therefore, MOSFETs, be they NMOS or PMOS, also have values, and by default, those values are defined by a Model Card, from which the computer can predict such physical properties about the NMOS or the PMOS transistor, as what its gate-capacitance is, how well it conducts when switched to conductive, conversely when the gate-voltage is zero, etc., etc., etc..

But, because NG-SPICE (v26) is advanced software – though still not the latest version – it may not require that the user defined all these parameters each time he or she considers designing a circuit, because standard component specifications exist.

By default, our MOSFETs have Reference Descriptors that begin with the letter “M”, and not with the letter “Q”, which would stand for a Bipolar Transistor, but which the GUI of ‘gschem’ suggests for the user when he first clicks a MOSFET into his circuit. So we override that, by editing the RefDes into a text-string that has the letter “M” followed without spaces by a number.

What I next proceeded to do, was to put MOSFET-transistors into my circuit, which from the GUI, only had 3 pins. This is a common way in which MOSFETs are often diagrammed, and looked something like this:

Believing that I could just accept what the GUI had constructed, I next tried to simulate the circuit, and received the error, which roughly stated “Unable to find Definition of Model.” This error-message wasted much of my time trying to solve, because I had in fact created a Model Card for the transistors which I was going to use, and at first, I despaired that NG-SPICE might not be as good as paid-for software. But I soon learned that indeed, the following example is a sufficient Model Card for an arbitrary NMOS transistor, with which circuits can be designed:

http://dirkmittler.homeip.net/text/NMOS1.mod.txt

Similarly, we can conjure a default PMOS transistor like so:

http://dirkmittler.homeip.net/text/PMOS1.mod.txt

In actual circuit-design, we’d drop the .TXT Filename-Extension, that makes the above examples readable in a Web-browser. Not only that, but we can also use the ‘gschem’ GUI, to embed such definitions directly into the Netlist, by giving them as a ‘Model’ attribute. So what was causing this error message, in my example? The fact is that MOSFETs are 4-pin components by nature. They have a hypothetical Source, a hypothetical Drain, a Substrate Electrode, and a Gate. It’s the voltage between the Gate and the Substrate Electrode, that finally determines how conductive the MOSFET is to become. By convention, many practical MOSFET-packages tie the Substrate Electrode together with the Source lead, which also happens to make the Source different from the Drain.

By telling NG-SPICE that we’re including a ‘MOSFET_TRANSISTOR‘ in our circuit, we’re telling this program to read 4 Nodes from the Netlist, to parse what the transistor is to be connected to. But, when the GUI only provides 3 arguments, an error ensues, that garbles the attempt of NG-SPICE to parse the Netlist. That’s all. Curiously, the reverse error does not happen. If I conjure a 4-lead MOSFET-symbol from the GUI, but specify a 3-lead MOSFET (more on that below), then I obtain a well-managed error message, that tells me what the problem is.

(Updated 06/14/2018 … )

Actually, the symbols above are also different in another way. In theory, one stands for an enhancement-mode, and the other, for a depletion-mode transistor. But, because under Linux, ‘this software is divided into two departments’, effectively, this does not matter.

The GUI allows schematics to be drawn in such a way, that Netlists result, while the actual NG-SPICE software emulates what these Netlists define. It’s in the emulation of the Netlists, that the decision is also made, as to whether a component is an enhancement-mode or a depletion-mode, or a subcircuit component… ( :1 )

(Updated 06/16/2018 : )

## Finding Out, How Many GPU Cores we have, Under Linux

One question which I see written about often on the Web, is how to find out certain stats about our GPU, under Linux. Under Windows, we had GUI-based programs such as ‘GPU-Z’, etc., but under Linux, the information can be just a bit harder to find.

I think that one tool which helps, is to have ‘OpenCL’ installed, as well as the command-line utility ‘clinfo’, which exists as one out of several packages, and as an actual, resulting command-name.

If we’re serious about programming our GPU, then having a GUI won’t help us much. We’d need to get dirty with code in that case, and then to have text-based solutions is suitable. But, if we’re just spectators in this sport, then two stats we may nevertheless want to know are:

1. How many GPU-Core-Groups do we have – since GPU-Cores are organized as Groups, and
2. How many actual Shader-Cores do we have in each Group?

Interestingly, the grouping of shader-cores, also represents how many vector-processors such GPU-computing tools as OpenCL see. And so, on the computer which I name ‘Klystron’, which is running Debian / Jessie, when typing in these commands as user, I get the following results:


dirk@Klystron:~$clinfo | grep units Max compute units: 4 Max compute units: 6 dirk@Klystron:~$ clinfo | grep multiple
Kernel Preferred work group size multiple:     1
Kernel Preferred work group size multiple:     64
dirk@Klystron:~\$



This needs some explaining. On ‘Klystron’, I have the proprietary, AMD packages for OpenCL installed, since that computer has both an AMD CPU and a Radeon GPU. And this means that the OpenCL version will be able to carry out computing on both. And so I have the stats for both.

In this case, the second entries reveal that I have 6×64 cores on the GPU.

## Freshly switched to KDE 4 or Plasma 5, and unable to Browse Network Shares using Dolphin?

I just installed Plasma 5 from the package-manager, on my tower-computer named ‘Plato’, only to find that for some time, I was unable to browse Windows File Shares – i.e. ‘SMB Shares’ – casually, just using the ‘Dolphin’ File Manager. Yet, I was able to mount these shares using ‘Smb4K’, making them visible in my local folders as though there.

Dolphin was showing me an essentially empty set of icons when displaying the Network.

As it turns out, we need to install a package named:

‘kio-extras’

Which will give Dolphin the additional plug-ins it needs, to recognize ‘smb://’ URIs. If our Plasma 5 desktop manager was set up professionally, then the person doing so would know about such details. But when individuals set up KDE or Plasma for the first time, we need to learn such details first-hand.

As an added note, we might find that when we click on the Trash widget in our Panel, which I left just at the right-most end, we may get the error-message to the effect that ‘trash:/’ was a corrupted URL. Yet, from within Dolphin, the trash bin displays just fine.

In my case this was happening, because I did not have Dolphin set up as my default File Management application, in my Plasma 5 Settings, where instead I had an application selected which would have been appropriate to an LXDE desktop, and which does not recognize URIs that begin with ‘trash:/’. Switching this setting to make Dolphin my Default File Manager, fixed this problem.

Dirk

## Lessening my Criticism of OpenShot

In this earlier posting, I criticized a non-linear video editor named ““, stating that it was unstable. I think I need to both lessen, and pinpoint my criticism of this software.

At the time I was mainly having problems with the Windows version of , which its developer worked long and hard to port to Windows. But the actual problem with under Windows has to do with an environment variable named ‘‘. When we install certain Linux-centric software under Windows, we are often instructed to set our ‘‘ variable to point to it. But with Qt-libraries, there is an additional variable named ‘‘, which states what folders the Qt-libraries are to be found in. This is a global variable under Windows, even though we may have different examples of software installed, that use different versions of the Qt-libraries.

The way it is with me, I have ‘‘ installed, which is also a Qt-based application which has been ported to Windows. Normally, a Windows executable will look in its own folder first, for an .DLL Files it needs, before looking in other directories.

But is an application that comes with many Qt-library-files, located in its own directory or directories. And so to point the executable to these libraries, the installer sets this environment variable.

The problem becomes, that when I next try to run , its Qt-executable respects this variable, and starts to try loading the Qt-libraries that shipped with . does this, even though the developers of Qt have apparently forgotten that this variable exists, because its observance is built-in to Qt.

The problem here is not strictly the fault of developers. With Qt applications, the slightest mismatch between the Qt version the application was linked against, from the shared libraries it will ink to again, when it is run, will cause typical error messages. This problem has already happened to many users, who install Qt-based applications under Linux, that were not compiled and linked in-stream with the packaged version of Qt. In fact, when we install certain Qt-based applications that are out-of-tree in this way, we often need to do something like this:


rm -f libQt*.so*




In the folder of the software in question, to force that software to link to the Qt-libraries we have installed globally, instead of linking to its own version of these libraries, before the software will run.

So in my case, when the time came for to ask me for my passphrases, in order to unlock my private keys, this library-mismatch prevented the software from working. At first this might sound like some sort of malware-problem, but is really just a library-incompatibility-problem.

And so the only way I was able to clean up this problem on my Windows 7 machine ‘‘, was to uninstall the Windows version of , which its authors provided so carefully, and to delete this environment variable as well. Apparently, if this variable is set and the folder empty – or nonexistent – this is not enough to convince a Qt-application to link to its own Qt-libraries. in my case I needed to delete this variable as well, before became stable again.

Now, if a user only feels that he will be running software on his Windows computer, that uses one, global Qt-version, this could all look very different. But in my usage-scenario,

• The way I set up my Windows machine is different, and
• I have access to on my Linux machines, for which reason I do not need this software under Windows.

I think that I had the additional problem on the machine I name ‘‘, that once crashed my X-server, when instructed to play back a corrupted video file, in its preview window, but at full quality. Yet, I have already learned that ‘‘ has a weak, fragile instance of the X-server running… So this may also not strictly be the fault of developers.

Dirk