Is this Intel i7 machine good for LTSpice?

[miso]

John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

Have I used Spice to analyze a resistor divider? Actually yes, but in
finite
element analysis to simulate a laser trim procedure. The basic networks
are
designed by hand.

John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?


OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction.




If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However,
your comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for
a voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to
compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.

If you know what you are doing, sure. But think about this. This is not a
case of using spice to stabilize a network, something you think is just
fine. The finite element analysis spice simulation of a trim resistor
doesn't have a simple algebraic solution.

You are simulating ohms law.

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:14:12 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> Gave us:

The Xeon product line is all about stability. No overclocking. They use ECC,
which some say is slower. [I don't know.] If you are seriously going to do a
ram disk (dumb idea), you would want the ECC. For software RAID, you should
have ECC. I give Dell credit for at least using a Supermicro mobo, since
some of the Asus mobos don't use ECC correctly.

The bad news is RAM prices are up for some reason.

EVGA did the X79 series pretty good, and they are screaming on the
newer chips too.

Oh, and one most certainly CAN OC a Xeon. It is all about the MOBO
you mount it on.

And my philosophy on ECC is... I have it on my OLD AMD X2. It costs
more, but there has never been a failure to catch.

If a CPU has upwards of 3 billion transistor elements in it, and they
breeze along without ever latching, then I think we can all safely use
non-ECC type RAM, and never see an issue.

I think it is even hard to find any more... Maybe even in commercial
circles, because it use is being phased out of industrial builds even.
They'll probably kill the lines soon enough, if the market wont support
the extra costs of making (and testing) them.

If you are not going into space, and would have a worry of a gamma ray
event, then you do not really need it, particularly when millions of PC
chug along without it just fine.

I rarely see full bore hard latch ups on PCs these days.

I do still see power supplies with 'hard start' issues. I have a damn
TV that only turns on when it is real cold. It will stay on after that
24/7/365, but most times, one of the 12V supplies latches on start, and
the thing falls into limbo and won't start up. They gave me my money
back on it. I should just go buy a 12V supply, and hang it onto the
pins. One of these days, I'll do it.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 01:45:25 -0500, the renowned rickman
<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

I heard a salesman saying the AMDs are faster on floating point. Anyone
heard that from a reliable source, like benchmarks maybe?

That would be a big change-- the last time I heard ME on the subject
he said that from his perspective AMD had no reason to exist (and the
way they're going... )


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

 

[rbehm]

On 09.11.2014 07:31, miso wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

In LT Spice, it is possible to copy-and-paste a few resistors into a
huge sheet array, and use that to simulate sheet resistor (or sheet
thermal) geometries, but it's awfully klutzy. There are better tools.

There was a DOS thermal analysis package, Sauna, that did model
thermal resistances as electrical resistor arrays.




Or you write a C program to generate the mesh.

You need to comment out elements to simulate the laser cutting the thin
film, so the problem is more complicated than you think.

Who would trust a design to "some DOS program"? That implies the program
hasn't be patched in decades.

So it might be from the days when programs did not need to be patched
every week. The underlying physics probably hasn't changed since that time.

--
Reinhardt

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 22:40:14 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

Have I used Spice to analyze a resistor divider? Actually yes, but in
finite
element analysis to simulate a laser trim procedure. The basic networks
are
designed by hand.

John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?


OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction.




If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However,
your comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for
a voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to
compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.



If you know what you are doing, sure. But think about this. This is not a
case of using spice to stabilize a network, something you think is just
fine. The finite element analysis spice simulation of a trim resistor
doesn't have a simple algebraic solution.

In LT Spice, it is possible to copy-and-paste a few resistors into a
huge sheet array, and use that to simulate sheet resistor (or sheet
thermal) geometries, but it's awfully klutzy. There are better tools.

There was a DOS thermal analysis package, Sauna, that did model
thermal resistances as electrical resistor arrays.

You are simulating ohms law.

I deal in discrete resistors, not sheets of resistive stuff, and I'm
usually constrained to standard values, preferably ones already in
stock. When networks get past two or three resistors, Spice is sure
faster than using a calculator (or a slide rule) to design a network
and evaluate its accuracy.

Sometimes I really use Spice to design circuits, and not just resistor
networks. Instinct and simulation can make cool circuits.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[miso]

John Larkin wrote:

In LT Spice, it is possible to copy-and-paste a few resistors into a
huge sheet array, and use that to simulate sheet resistor (or sheet
thermal) geometries, but it's awfully klutzy. There are better tools.

There was a DOS thermal analysis package, Sauna, that did model
thermal resistances as electrical resistor arrays.




Or you write a C program to generate the mesh.

You need to comment out elements to simulate the laser cutting the thin
film, so the problem is more complicated than you think.

Who would trust a design to "some DOS program"? That implies the program
hasn't be patched in decades.

 

[miso]

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 01:45:25 -0500, the renowned rickman
gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:


I heard a salesman saying the AMDs are faster on floating point. Anyone
heard that from a reliable source, like benchmarks maybe?

That would be a big change-- the last time I heard ME on the subject
he said that from his perspective AMD had no reason to exist (and the
way they're going... )


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

AMD has more GPU skill than Intel, so they made chips for console gaming.
Still I rather be intel these days than AMD.

 

[miso]

DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 23:14:12 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> Gave us:

The Xeon product line is all about stability. No overclocking. They use
ECC, which some say is slower. [I don't know.] If you are seriously going
to do a ram disk (dumb idea), you would want the ECC. For software RAID,
you should have ECC. I give Dell credit for at least using a Supermicro
mobo, since some of the Asus mobos don't use ECC correctly.

The bad news is RAM prices are up for some reason.


EVGA did the X79 series pretty good, and they are screaming on the
newer chips too.

Oh, and one most certainly CAN OC a Xeon. It is all about the MOBO
you mount it on.

And my philosophy on ECC is... I have it on my OLD AMD X2. It costs
more, but there has never been a failure to catch.

The X79 chip really doesn't handle ECC. That is why I keep saying to use a
Supermicro mobo.

Read this thread:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20110905135723039&board_id=1&model=P8B+WS&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Regarding RAID and ECC:
> http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1689724

When I built my Xeon desktop, I simply bought the Kingston ECC with the
Intel qual. Yeah, the intel qual cost me an extra $15. ECC added about $50
to the total cost.

Hey, you want junk, go to the big box store.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:31:09 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

In LT Spice, it is possible to copy-and-paste a few resistors into a
huge sheet array, and use that to simulate sheet resistor (or sheet
thermal) geometries, but it's awfully klutzy. There are better tools.

There was a DOS thermal analysis package, Sauna, that did model
thermal resistances as electrical resistor arrays.




Or you write a C program to generate the mesh.

You need to comment out elements to simulate the laser cutting the thin
film, so the problem is more complicated than you think.

Trimming a resistor network is more complex than I think? Not likely.

Who would trust a design to "some DOS program"? That implies the program
hasn't be patched in decades.

I never used Sauna; I just noted that it did thermal analysis as a
resistor matrix.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2014-11-08, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

Or you write a C program to generate the mesh.

You need to comment out elements to simulate the laser cutting the thin
film, so the problem is more complicated than you think.

Who would trust a design to "some DOS program"? That implies the program
hasn't be patched in decades.

not necessarily a bad thing.

--
umop apisdn

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2014-11-07, upsidedown@downunder.com <upsidedown@downunder.com> wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 02:16:36 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

Joerg wrote:

miso wrote:
Joerg wrote:


My LTSpice RAW files are substantially larger than that. HD read-write
times are a major slowdown.


The advantage to building it yourself is you know the capabilities of
each component. The disadvantage is is tends to cost more.


That's ok. I just don't want this to turn into a time-consuming science
project.


The ram in a disk drive is used as a FIFO of sorts. [It is way more
complicated that a FIFO in reality.]

More likely, the buffer capacity is used to reorganize write requests
so that close by sectors and tracks are written first, i.e. minimize
R/W head movement and do the writing during a single disk rotation.

Originally, this optimization was done by the OS, but the OS needed to
know the physical structure of the disk. When the disk is accessed by
logical block numbers (LBN) and when the disk drive itself performs
e.g. bad block replacement, the OS doesn't know the physical structure
of the disk and hence the disk itself has to perform access
optimization.

Unfortunately, if the power is suddenly lost, some disk structures are
out of date, and hopefully the next startup may be able to fix the
disk.

It could be worse.

http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/breaking-areal-density-barriers-with-seagate-smr-master-ti/



--
umop apisdn

 

[DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUn]

On Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:47:10 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> Gave us:

When I built my Xeon desktop, I simply bought the Kingston ECC with the
Intel qual. Yeah, the intel qual cost me an extra $15. ECC added about $50
to the total cost.

Hey, you want junk, go to the big box store.

Today's fast RAM, ECC capable or not, is quite robust.

You are retarded to think otherwise, and a thousand OC Youtube videos
further cement that fact. Some of them by a factor of three. Your
claim is bogus.

Your mindset, and yardstick are what is junk, "pro-box" utter dimwit
mentality horseshit.

Supermicro has you and a couple others here cowed with their utter
bullshit.

Look at the benchmark sites. Pretty easy to see.
One does NOT see many "super micro based "high end set-ups being
shown, and it is not like they do not exist in the database, they are
just a lot further down the list.

A real joke for those of us who actually know. The benchmarks do not
lie, and ther are iterations with ECC as well.

Quite straightforward that your "big box store" mindset is convoluted
compared with reality.

Consumers are not dumb and they drive what those stores stock.
Oops... There is a *huge* flaw in your logic.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 11/8/2014 1:40 AM, miso wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

Have I used Spice to analyze a resistor divider? Actually yes, but in
finite
element analysis to simulate a laser trim procedure. The basic networks
are
designed by hand.

John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?


OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction.




If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However,
your comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for
a voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to
compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.



If you know what you are doing, sure. But think about this. This is not a
case of using spice to stabilize a network, something you think is just
fine. The finite element analysis spice simulation of a trim resistor
doesn't have a simple algebraic solution.

Sure it does, you just have to use conformal maps.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[miso]

Have a nice day.

 

[miso]

John Larkin wrote:

Trimming a resistor network is more complex than I think? Not likely.

Dude, it isn't network. Sheesh! Haven't you ever seen a laser trimmed
resistor. Why do you insist on commenting on things you don't understand?
> http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0255_tft/images/hybrid19.gif

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 09 Nov 2014 22:14:14 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:


Trimming a resistor network is more complex than I think? Not likely.




Dude, it isn't network. Sheesh! Haven't you ever seen a laser trimmed
resistor. Why do you insist on commenting on things you don't understand?
http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0255_tft/images/hybrid19.gif

All you are here for is to tell other people how much smarter you are
than they are. Like Sloman and Blobbs. Everything becomes personal.
That's sad.

Did you invent laser trimming, or were you just around people who did?

Have you designed anything lately? Tell us about it.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 11 November 2014 02:41:40 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 09 Nov 2014 22:14:14 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:


Trimming a resistor network is more complex than I think? Not likely.




Dude, it isn't network. Sheesh! Haven't you ever seen a laser trimmed
resistor. Why do you insist on commenting on things you don't understand?
http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0255_tft/images/hybrid19.gif

All you are here for is to tell other people how much smarter you are
than they are. Like Sloman and Blobbs. Everything becomes personal.
That's sad.

John Larkin - as a card carrying egomaniac - seems every correction or elucidation as an attempt by the person posting the correction to establish how much smarter they are than everybody else.

The concept that bad information misleads people, is consequently potentially dangerous (or at least time wasting) and should be corrected to make everybody's lives easier, is not one that he can get his (somewhat inflated) head around.

From his point of view, it's all about status, not about making the world run better.

> Did you invent laser trimming, or were you just around people who did?

Neither is implied by the web-page posted (which comes from the University of Bolton in the UK - one of the "new universities" produced by re-badging the old technical colleges originally introduced to handle the more academic bits of apprentice-ship training).

> Have you designed anything lately? Tell us about it.

Not that John Larkin does design - he specialises in persistent improvisation, which works nearly as well, if you are as good at it as John Larkin is.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 11 November 2014 10:45:05 UTC+11, Maynard A. Philbrook Jr. wrote:

In article <33e106aa-a787-4b34-8385-6e758350fbc0@googlegroups.com>,
bill.sloman@gmail.com says...

On Saturday, 8 November 2014 08:54:52 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?

OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction.

If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However, your
comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for a
voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.

It can be, in the hands of people who do design, as opposed to persistent trial and error.

Yes, Bill speaks from personal experience.

Not a whole lot of it. The first time I used Spice in a design I was being paid to produce was back in Luton around 1975 - I was putting together a capacitance-based position sensor, and we modelled the FET+one bjt front end amplifier in Spice, and ended up adding 0.15pF of negative feedback - as a broken trace on a printed circuit board - to get the whole thing to work reliably. That would have been difficult to handle by cut-and-try.

Later - at a different company - we used the HiLo digital simulation package to keep track of fairly complicated digital circuits. It was more useful for picking up drop-offs than it ever was in inspiring original design, and I got peeved once when I found that the bug I was having to fix had been obvious in the simulations of the original design, but hadn't registered as a potential problem with the guy who'd turned my original concept into detailed hardware.

Much later - in Venlo around 2002 - I used Kevin Awylward's SuperSpice to sort out a weird conductivity to frequency converter circuit that now sells in a fake beer bottle that goes through brewery bottle washing machines to make sure that wash liquids start off as hot (85C) 2% NaOH and end as clean tap water (with a a thousand-fold lower conductivity). Spice wasn't involved in the original invention of the circuit, but it was essential to the process of working out component values that would work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, 11 November 2014 12:27:28 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:47:51 -0500, "Maynard A. Philbrook Jr."
jamie_ka1lpa@charter.net> wrote:

In article <33e106aa-a787-4b34-8385-6e758350fbc0@googlegroups.com>,
bill.sloman@gmail.com says...

On Saturday, 8 November 2014 08:54:52 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?

OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction..

If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However, your
comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for a
voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.

It can be, in the hands of people who do design, as opposed to persistent trial and error.

Yes, Bill speaks from personal experience.

Sloman doesn't design electronics, so his opinions are irrelevant.

I haven't designed much recently, but I've designed enough over my career for me to think that my opinion is worth propagating. This is a personal point of view. John Larkin does tend to think that only his own opinions are worth propagating, which may may overly restrict the playing field.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Maynard A. Philbrook Jr.]

In article <33e106aa-a787-4b34-8385-6e758350fbc0@googlegroups.com>,
bill.sloman@gmail.com says...

On Saturday, 8 November 2014 08:54:52 UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:51:04 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:37:43 -0800, miso <miso@sushi.com> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

Do that if you enjoy it. I

You have no fucking clue what I am talking about. I might as well be
talking to the wall. Have you ever designed a chip where you laser trim
thin film resistors?

OK, you have joined the swearing, insulting, content-free faction.

If you had something relevant to contribute, I would comment. However, your
comments were 100% non sequitur.

The laser trimming situation is a case where spice is actually useful for a
voltage divider design. You comment out elements to simulate the laser
taking bite out of thin film. It isn't the kind of situation that could be
solved with simple algebra. The sensitivity of the bite is hard to compute.

So, Spice *is* a design tool.

It can be, in the hands of people who do design, as opposed to persistent trial and error.

Yes, Bill speaks from personal experience.

Jamie