Shaping the History of SPICE

The initial research goal of a graduate class project in 1969-1970 to “produce the best available computer program for the simulation of practical integrated circuits (ICs)” in the early days of the semiconductor industry resulted in the simulator SPICE. Today, more than four decades and 1 billion transistors per chip later, SPICE, in its various commercial or public-domain releases, has evolved into an IC design standard used for every single transistor-level circuit design. The following is an account of my participation, starting in 1977, in shaping the history of SPICE.