Harmonizing Circuit Design and EMC DesignPart 24 EMC Calculation Methods and EMC Simulations (9): GNU Tools Used in Calculation Methods

Good day! I’m Inagaki of ROHM.

This 24th installment is about GNU tools that are used in calculation methods and simulations relating to electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).

In this column, I have already mentioned the use of shell script execution in EMC calculations. Representative tools used here include GnuWin, which enables execution of Linux commands in a Windows environment, the rapid stream line editor sed, the character string search utility grep, the numerical calculation software program GnuOctave for use in noise removal (peak detection), the GnuPlot graph display software that was introduced in article number 23, and the GUI tool GnuAutoHotkey introduced in the 22nd article. Many of these tools have the “Gnu” prefix; are you familiar with them?

Upon doing a bit of web exploration, we find that GNU is a project for the development and publication of a group of exclusively open source software resources related to UNIX-style OSes (POSIX compliant); it is administered by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The GNU project was initiated by Richard Stallman in 1983, while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); its mission is to protect the right (“Copyleft”) to maintain, protect, and promote the publication of software source code as well as its use, research, duplication, modification, and redistribution. The name “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU is NOT Unix”. Quite interesting. There are several dozen GNU tools, including major and minor packages; I certainly cannot introduce them all here, so the following is a list of the most representative tools. I think readers will be familiar with many of these.

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I too have been using more than half of these; merely seeing their names brings back those occasions vividly–they were good times! In addition to circuit analysis simulators for semiconductor integrated circuits (LSIs) and CAD (Computer Aided Design) software packages, GNU tools also include numerous software programs related to EDA (Engineering Design Automation). These applications, while open source, feature high speed and precision and high reliability, and are continuously being upgraded and maintained. There are many such packages available for use in EMC calculations as well, and I suggest that the reader try including them in shell scripts.

We have finally come to the end of the last of our columns “Harmonizing Circuit Design and EMC Design”. It has been a short two years, but I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to spend this time with you. Should the chance arise, let’s definitely meet again!

Thank you all for your kind attention.