ADMS

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Automatic Device Model Synthesizer (ADMS) is public domain software used in the semiconductor industry to translate Verilog-A models into C-models which can be directly read by a number of SPICE simulators, including Spectre Circuit Simulator, Ngspice, and HSpice.

ADMS stands for Automatic Device Model Synthesizer.^[1] ADMS can be used to turn Verilog-A compact models^[2] into C code. ADMS interpreter parses a Verilog-AMS file to build a data tree.^[3] XML filters are applied on the tree to generate the output files.

ADMS aims to reduce the effort of circuit simulator developers to integrate device models - at the same time, it provides the option to compact model developers to use the vendor-neutral language Verilog-A for model definition, improving robustness and maintainability.^[4]

ADMS is used by the open source SPICE simulator NGSPICE^[5] to support a number of compact models. Following models are supported by NGSPICE using ADMS:^[6]

• MOS EKV (LEVEL=44)
• MOS PSP102 (LEVEL=45)
• BJT Mextram 504 (LEVEL=6)
• BJT Hicum0 (LEVEL=7)
• BJT Hicum2 (LEVEL=8)

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ADMS only parses a subset of Verilog-A, and not all statements are supported by all XML filters. Specifically, current controlled voltage sources are not supported in most filters targeting SPICE simulators:

• V(..) <+ I(..) // does not work with NGSPICE

Instead, this needs to be represented as a conductance expression (and not impedance).
i.e. I(..) <+ V(..)

• I (..) probes do not work with NGSPICE

Some other language constructions need to be supported in the filter as well

• for loop,
• case statement.

Many language features are hard to support with ADMS filters

• laplace_transform,
• idt,
• switching branches.

Important aspects of code generation are close to impossible with ADMS

• dataflow analysis
• code optimisation,

and

• ADMS is extremely slow (which can be seen on slightly larger models).

• Verilog-A
• SPICE

• EKV MOSFET Model: Industry Standard Model for Analog/RF IC (2007)
• adms (download)
• A Platform for Compact Model Sharing! (A project started in 2011)
• The i-MOS Project: An Open Platform for Device Modeling and Circuit Simulation (archived 2014)