Information about Spices

SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) is a general purpose analog circuit simulator. It is a powerful program that is used in IC and board-level design to check the integrity of circuit designs and to predict circuit behavior.

Introduction

Integrated circuits, unlike board-level designs composed of discrete parts, are impossible to breadboard before manufacture. Further, the high costs of photolithographic masks and other manufacturing prerequisites make it essential to design the circuit to be as close to perfect as possible before the integrated circuit is first built. Simulating the circuit with SPICE is the industry-standard way to verify circuit operation at the transistor level before committing to manufacturing an integrated circuit.

Board-level designs can often be breadboarded, but designers may want more information about the circuit than is available from a single mock-up. For instance, performance is affected by component manufacturing tolerances and it is helpful for designers to simulate with SPICE to predict the effect of variations of those values. Even with a breadboard, some aspects may not be accurate compared to the final printed wiring board, such as parasitic resistances and capacitances. In these cases it is common to perform Monte Carlo simulations using SPICE, a task which is impractical using calculations by hand.

Circuit simulation programs, of which SPICE and derivatives are the most prominent, take a text netlist describing the circuit elements (transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.) and their connections, and translate this description into equations to be solved. The general equations produced are nonlinear differential algebraic equations which are solved using implicit integration methods, Newton's method and sparse matrix techniques.

Origins

SPICE was developed at the Electronics Research Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley by Larry Nagel with direction from his research advisor, Prof. Donald Pederson. SPICE1 was largely a derivative of the CANCER program,^[1] which Nagel had worked on under Prof. Ronald Rohrer. CANCER was an acronym for "Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation," a hint to Berkeley's liberalism of 1960s: at these times many circuit simulators were developed under the United States Department of Defense contracts that required the capability to evaluate the radiation hardness of a circuit. When Nagel's original advisor, Prof. Rohrer, left Berkeley, Prof. Pederson became his advisor. Pederson insisted that CANCER, a proprietary program, be rewritten enough that restrictions could be removed and the program could be put in the public domain.^[2]

SPICE1 was first presented at a conference in 1973.^[3] SPICE1 was coded in FORTRAN and used nodal analysis to construct the circuit equations. Nodal analysis has limitations in representing inductors, floating voltage sources and the various forms of controlled sources. SPICE1 had relatively few circuit elements available and used a fixed-timestep transient analysis. The real popularity of SPICE started with SPICE2^[4] in 1975. SPICE2, also coded in FORTRAN, was a much-improved program with more circuit elements, variable timestep transient analysis using either trapezoidal or Gear integration, equation formulation via modified nodal analysis^[5] (avoiding the limitations of nodal analysis), and an innovative FORTRAN-based memory allocation system developed by another graduate student, Ellis Cohen. The last FORTRAN version of SPICE was 2G.6 in 1983. SPICE3^[6] was developed by Thomas Quarles (with A. Richard Newton as advisor) in 1989. It is written in C, uses the same netlist syntax, and added X Window plotting.

As an early open source program, SPICE was widely distributed and used. It inspired and served as a basis for many other circuit simulation programs, in academia, in industry, and in commercial products. Its ubiquity became such that "to SPICE a circuit" remains synonymous with circuit simulation.^[7] SPICE source code was from the beginning distributed by UC Berkeley for a nominal charge (to cover the cost of magnetic tape). The license includes an acknowledgement clause and distribution restrictions for countries not considered friendly to the USA. Nevertheless, Berkeley SPICE continues to influence both commercial and academic offshoots of the program. Early commercial versions of SPICE include HSPICE (now owned by Synopsys) and PSPICE (now owned by Cadence Design Systems). The academic spinoffs of SPICE include XSPICE, developed at Georgia Tech, which added mixed analog/digital "code models" for behavioral simulation, and Cider (previously CODECS, from UC Berkeley/Oregon State Univ.) which added semiconductor device simulation.

See also

• IBIS (Input Output Buffer Information Specification)
• Transistor Models

References

External links

• Larry Nagel, "The Life of SPICE"
• The Spice Page
• Thomas Quarles' dissertation (SPICE3)
• SPICE on gEDA HOWTO
• A brief history of SPICE
• Spice 3 Userguide
• Spice 3 Quickstart Tutorial

Versions with source code available

• SPICE2 and SPICE3 at UC Berkeley
• Cider at UC Berkeley
• ngspice: SPICE3 with updates and XSPICE extensions
• tclspice: ngspice and Tcl scripting

Applications

• Sample Spice code and output for various circuits

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A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for the purpose of flavoring, and indirectly for the purpose of killing and preventing growth of pathogenic bacteria^[8].

Many of the same substances have other uses in which they are referred to by different terms, e.g. in food preservation, medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics, perfumery or as vegetables. For example, turmeric is also used as a preservative; licorice as a medicine; garlic as a vegetable and nutmeg as a recreational drug.

Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are leafy, green plant parts used for flavoring purposes. Herbs, such as basil or oregano, may be used fresh, and are commonly chopped into smaller pieces; spices, however, are dried and usually ground into a powder.

Classification and types

Salt is a very common seasoning, often mistakenly considered as a spice, but it is in fact a mineral product.

The basic classification of spices is as follows:

• Leaves and/or branches of aromatic plants, all or part of the plant can be used as one pleases. Basil, bay leaf, parsley, rosemary, tarragon, and thyme are all good examples.
• Ripened fruits or seeds of plants. Examples include dill, fennel, mustard, and pepper.
• Roots or bulbs of certain plants, garlic and ginger, for example.

History

Spices have been prominent in human history virtually since their inception. Spices were among the most valuable items of trade in the ancient and medieval world. The culinary use of spices originated in the Indian Sub continent and South-East Asia. In the story of Genesis, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to spice merchants. In the biblical poem Song of Solomon, the male speaker compares his beloved to many forms of spices. Generally, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Mesopotamian sources do not refer to known spices.

The spice trade developed throughout the Middle East in around 2000 BC with cinnamon, Indonesian cinnamon and pepper.

A recent archaeolgical discovery suggests that the clove, indigineous to the Indonesian island of Ternate in the Maluku Islands, could have been introduced to the Middle East very early on. Digs found a clove burnt onto the floor of a burned down kitchen in the Mesopotamian site of Terqa, in what is now modern-day Syria, dated to 1700 BC ^[9]. The ancient Indian epic of Ramayana mentions cloves. In any case, it is known that the Romans had cloves in the 1st century AD because Pliny the Elder spoke of them in his writings.

In South Asia, nutmeg, which originates from the Banda Islands in the Moluccas, has a Sanskrit name. Sanskrit is the language of the sacred Hindu texts, this shows how old the usage of this spice is in this region. Historians estimate that nutmeg was introduced to Europe in the 6th century BC ^[10].

Indonesian merchants went around China, India, the Middle East and the east coast of Africa. Arab merchants controlled the routes through the Middle East and India until Roman times with the discovery of new sea routes. This made the city of Alexandria in Egypt the main trading centre for spices because of its port.

Middle Ages

Spices were among the most luxurious products available in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia), cumin, nutmeg, ginger and cloves. They were all imported from plantations in Asia and Africa, which made them extremely expensive. From the 8th until the 15th century, the Republic of Venice had the monopoly on spice trade with the Middle East, and along it with the neighboring Italian city-states. The trade made the region phenomenally rich. It has been estimated that around 1,000 tons of pepper and 1,000 tons of the other common spices were imported into Western Europe each year during the Late Middle Ages. The value of these goods was the equivalent of a yearly supply of grain for 1.5 million people.^[11] While pepper was the most common spice, the most exclusive was saffron, used as much for its vivid yellow-red color as for its flavor. Spices that have now fallen into some obscurity include grains of paradise, a relative of cardamom which almost entirely replaced pepper in late medieval north French cooking, long pepper, mace, spikenard, galangal and cubeb. A popular modern-day misconception is that medieval cooks used liberal amounts of spices, particularly black pepper, merely to disguise the taste of spoiled meat. However, a medieval feast was as much a culinary event as it was a display of the host's vast resources and generosity, and as most nobles had a wide selection of fresh or preserved meats, fish or seafood to choose from, the use of ruinously expensive spices on cheap, rotting meat would have made little sense.^[12]

Early modern period

The control of trade routes and the spice-producing regions were the main reasons that Portuguese navigator Vasco Da Gama sailed to India in 1499. Spain and Portugal were not happy to pay the high price that Venice demanded for spices. At around the same time, Christopher Columbus returned from the New World, he described to investors the many new, and then unknown, spices available there.

It was Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) who allowed the Portuguese to take control of the sea routes to India. In 1506, he took the island of Socotra in the mouth of the Red Sea and, in 1507, Ormuz in the Persian Gulf. Since becoming the viceroy of the Indies, he took Goa in India in 1510, and Malacca on the Malay peninsula in 1511. The Portuguese could now trade directly with Siam, China and the Moluccas. The Silk Road complemented the Portuguese sea routes, and brought the treasures of the Orient to Europe via Lisbon, many of which are coveted spices.

Common spice mixes

• Colombo (paprika, cumin, coriander, nutmeg, ginger, black pepper, star anise, cardamom, cloves, mustard grains, saffron);
• Curry powder;
• Five bays;
• Five-spice powder;
• Garam masala;
• Quatre épices;
• Ras el hanout;
• Za'atar.

Production

Production in tonnes. Figures 2003-2004 Researched by FAOSTAT (FAO)
India	1 600 000	86 %	1 600 000	86 %
China	66 000	4 %	66 000	4 %
Bangladesh	48 000	3 %	48 000	3 %
Pakistan	45 300	2 %	45 300	2 %
Turkey	33 000	2 %	33 000	2 %
Nepal	15 500	1 %	15 500	1 %
Other countries	60 900	3 %	60 910	3 %
Total	1 868 700	100 %	1 868 710	100 %

Further reading

• Turner, Jack (2004). Spice: The History of a Temptation. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40721-9. 
• Food Bacteria-Spice Survey Shows Why Some Cultures Like It Hot Quote: “...Garlic, onion, allspice and oregano, for example, were found to be the best all-around bacteria killers (they kill everything)...Top 30 Spices with Antimicrobial Properties...?
• August 18, 1998, Common Kitchen Spices Kill E. Coli O157:H7 Quote: “...The study is the first in the United States that looks at the effect of common spices on E. coli O157:H7. Previous studies have concluded spices kill other foodborne pathogens. “In the first part of our study, we tested 23 spices against E. coli O157:H7 in the laboratory,” Fung said. “We found that several spices are good at killing this strain of E. coli.”...?
• The Lure and Lore of Spices Quote: “If the appearance of spices were to reflect their real importance in the history of the world, the bottles of spices would be filled with bright glittery substances, diamonds, rubies, emeralds or gold would be appropriate. When you opened the bottle, a poof of vibrantly colored, mystically fragrant, magical smoke would slowly billow softly throughout the room.?

Notes

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Sources

• Adamson, Melitta Weiss (2004), Food in Medieval Times. ISBN 0-313-32147-7.
• Scully, Terence (1995), The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. ISBN 0-85115-611-8.

See also

• List of herbs and spices
• List of Indian spices
• Spice trade
• Run (island): Seventeenth-century British-Dutch rivalry for a source of nutmeg, lead to the British exchanging this Indonesian island for Manhattan (New York)
• International Spicy Food Day

External links

• Enspicelopedia at McCormick.com

•  • [ e] Herbs and spices
Herbs	Angelica • Basil • Basil, holy • Basil, Thai • Bay leaf • Boldo • Borage • Cannabis • Chervil • Chives • Coriander leaf (cilantro) • Curry leaf • Dill • Epazote • Eryngium foetidum (long coriander) • Hoja santa • Houttuynia cordata (giấp c) • Hyssop • Lavender • Lemon balm • Lemon grass • Lemon verbena • Limnophila aromatica (rice paddy herb) • Lovage • Marjoram • Mint • Mitsuba • Oregano • Parsley • Perilla (shiso) • Rosemary • Rue • Sage • Savory • Sorrel • Stevia • Tarragon • Thyme • Vietnamese coriander (rau răm) • Woodruff
Spices	African pepper • Ajwain (bishop's weed) • Aleppo pepper • Allspice • Amchur (mango powder) • Anise • Aromatic ginger • Asafoetida • Camphor • Caraway • Cardamom • Cardamom, black • Cassia • Cayenne pepper • Celery seed • Chili • Cinnamon • Clove • Coriander seed • Cubeb • Cumin • Cumin, black • Dill seed • Fennel • Fenugreek • Fingerroot (krachai) • Galangal, greater • Galangal, lesser • Garlic • Ginger • Grains of Paradise • Horseradish • Juniper berry • Liquorice • Mace • Mahlab • Malabathrum (tejpat) • Mustard, black • Mustard, brown • Mustard, white • Nasturtium • Nigella (kalonji) • Nutmeg • Paprika • Pepper, black • Pepper, green • Pepper, long • Pepper, pink, Brazilian • Pepper, pink, Peruvian • Pepper, white • Pomegranate seed (anardana) • Poppy seed • Saffron • Sarsaparilla • Sassafras • Sesame • Sichuan pepper (huājiāo, sansho) • Star anise • Sumac • Tasmanian pepper • Tamarind • Turmeric • Wasabi • Zedoary