The full form of PSPICE is Personal Computer Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis.

SPICE is program that simulates electronic circuits on your PC. You can view any voltage or current waveform in your circuit. SPICE calculates these voltages and currents versus time (Transient Analysis) or versus frequency (AC Analysis). Most SPICE programs also perform other analysis like DC, Sensitivity, Noise and Distortion.

SPICE stands for Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley developed this computer program during the mid-70s. What drove this development? The arrival of the integrated circuit demanded a method to test and tweak circuit designs before the expensive fabrication process.

Today, SPICE is available from many vendors who have added schematic drawing tools to the front end and graphics post processors to plot the results. SPICE simulators and applications have expanded to analog and digital circuits, microwave devices, and electromechanical systems.

SPICE is a great tool for learning electronics. You can increase your understanding of circuits as you play and tinker with them. Experiment! Modify the circuit and see what happens! How long does it take? Change a resistor value and see the effect on a circuit in seconds.

Ideally, we would actually build and test actual circuits to understand all of its behaviors. However, you would need breadboards, components and time to wire the circuit. Actual circuits also require expensive equipment like power supplies, signal generators and oscilloscopes. It may be difficult to physically breadboard every circuit you encounter.

You can spend hours building an actual circuit and only get a simple concept from it, whereas, SPICE provides the insight in minutes. SPICE can be your “virtual” breadboard.  Even if you have a short time to spare, you can cover several circuit principles and applications.