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circuits: Definition and Recommended Links

Our favorite links for this topic area. Enjoy, fellow researchers! Questions, comments, new links? Email eewindow@aol.com!.

The process of circuit design can cover systems ranging from complex electronic systems all the way down to the individual transistors within an integrated circuit. For simple circuits the design process can often be done by one person without needing a planned or structured design process, but for more complex designs, teams of designers following a systematic approach with intelligently guided computer simulation are becoming increasingly common.

Formal circuit design usually involves the following stages: sometimes, writing the requirement specification after liaising with the customer writing a technical proposal to meet the requirements of the customer specification synthesising on paper a schematic circuit diagram, an abstract electrical or electronic circuit that will meet the specifications calculating the component values to meet the operating specifications under specified conditions performing simulations to verify the correctness of the design building a breadboard or other prototype version of the design and testing against specification making any alterations to the circuit to achieve compliance choosing a method of construction as well as all the parts and materials to be used presenting component and layout information to draughtspersons, and layout and mechanical engineers, for prototype production testing or type-testing a number of prototypes to ensure compliance with customer reqiurements signing and approving the final manufacturing drawings post-design services (obsolescence of components etc.)

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_design)

other great electronics sites:ee toolbox site

• • circuits
    • The process of circuit design can cover systems ranging from complex electronic systems all the way down to the individual transistors within an integrated circuit. For simple circuits the design process can often be done by one person without needing a planned or structured design process, but for more complex designs, teams of designers following a systematic approach with intelligently guided computer simulation are becoming increasingly common.

      Formal circuit design usually involves the following stages: sometimes, writing the requirement specification after liaising with the customer writing a technical proposal to meet the requirements of the customer specification synthesising on paper a schematic circuit diagram, an abstract electrical or electronic circuit that will meet the specifications calculating the component values to meet the operating specifications under specified conditions performing simulations to verify the correctness of the design building a breadboard or other prototype version of the design and testing against specification making any alterations to the circuit to achieve compliance choosing a method of construction as well as all the parts and materials to be used presenting component and layout information to draughtspersons, and layout and mechanical engineers, for prototype production testing or type-testing a number of prototypes to ensure compliance with customer reqiurements signing and approving the final manufacturing drawings post-design services (obsolescence of components etc.)

      Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_design)

      (Note: The Electronic Engineers Toolbox provides an alternative set of featured links for this word at http://www.cera2.com/circuit.htm)

      Featured Links:

      IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference

      The IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference is the premier conference for information on leading-edge analog and digital circuits. CICC is dedicated to IC development, showcasing original, first published technical work and innovative circuit techniques that tackle practical problems.
      http://www.ieee-cicc.org/

      XCircuit

      XCircuit is a UNIX/X11 (and now Windows, if you have an X-Server running) program for drawing publishable-quality electrical circuit schematic diagrams and related figures, and produce circuit netlists through schematic capture. XCircuit regards circuits as inherently hierarchical, and writes both hierarchical PostScript output and hierarchical SPICE netlists. Circuit components are saved in and retrieved from libraries which are fully...
      http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/

      Eldo

      High-Performance Circuit Simulator -Verification of A/MS (Analog/Mixed-Signal) circuits and SoC (System on a Chip) designs have reached the limit of classical SPICE simulation techniques. The Eldo simulator is the simulator of choice for IC silicon vendors and Fabless design centers for four reasons: speed, accuracy, convergence, and capacity. When compared to other commercial or internal SPICE simulators, users report a 3X to 10X speed ratio without experiencing a compromise of accuracy, compared to silicon. Eldo provides the best-in-class convergence for all problems. Designers worldwide use Eldo on designs ranging from the lowest complexity of a single cell to systems of up to 300,000 transistors or more.
      http://www.mentor.com

      eCircuit Center

      This site is not electronics theory from the ground up (there are plenty of great textbooks already in print!) This site attempts to provide what I've always learned best from - informal, hands-on and fun experiences that lead to a deeper, more intuitive understanding of circuit design and analysis.
      http://www.ecircuitcenter.com/

      Lessons In Electric Circuits

      This introduction comes from the operating manual for a circuit simulation program called Electronics Workbench. Using a graphic interface, it allows the user to draw a circuit schematic and then have the computer analyze that circuit, displaying the results in graphic form. It is a very valuable analysis tool, but it has its shortcomings. For one, it and other graphic programs like it tend to be unreliable when analyzing complex circuits,...
      http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/electricCircuits/index.htm

      ADiT

      ADiT is the tool of choice to address the challenges associated with simulating today’s complex analog and mixed signal circuit designs. It is a fast-SPICE simulation tool that delivers the ability to obtain accurate and reliable simulation results 10X — 100X faster than traditional SPICE tools. ADiT is integrated into the ADVance MS mixed-signal simulation solution and supports both Eldo and HSPICE netlist formats.
      http://www.mentor.com

      Integrated Circuit Identification

      The large directory of integrated circuit logos. Find the manufacturer you're looking for!
      http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/~eshop/mflogo.dir/ic-id.html

      IC Master

      The IC Master Catalog is the electronic industry's leading source of information on over 125,000 commercially available integrated circuits. This unique and powerful search tool is available by subscription in both print and CD-ROM. Paid only.
      http://www.icmaster.com/

      ADiT

      ADVance MS is a language-neutral, mixed-signal simulator that enables top-down design and bottom-up verification of multi-million gate analog/mixed-signal System-on-Chip designs.
      http://www.mentor.com

      Circuit Scout

      Circuit Scout is aimed at providing the Electrical Engineering community a way of searching for circuit designs on the internet. Circuit Scout provides very highly targeted results by reviewing the content that is available for search. We do not rely on blind web crawlers to find our content which typically leads to a high volume of "junk" links that are not even relevant.
      http://www.circuitscout.com/

      Explanation: these links are provided as part of our EE glossary project, which seeks to identify the most prominent keywords in embedded systems, embedded software, realtime and rtos, dsp (digital signal processing), system-on-a-chip, microprocessors and microcontrollers, and other constituent elements for embedded systems. While we seek to keep most of the links up-to-date, the user is refered to other primary electronic-based search sites such as: cera2.com, embedded.com, or EDN Magazine. If you have any suggestions of links or definitions, please email!

Mark Twain quote for the day:

The first thing I want to teach is disloyalty till they get used to disusing that word loyalty as representing a virtue. This will beget independence- which is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.
- Mark Twain's Notebook