What is Spice netlist and its application areas.

1) What are the design areas where Spice netlist is used?
2) What are the differences between Netlist and Spice netlist?

Netlist can be defined as the piece of code, which describe a circuit in textual form for interpretation by computer. Any simulation software uses some kind of textual description which is converted to machine understandable language. Today three basic simulation engine are avialable as per my knowledge
1. Spice 3: By Department of the University of California at Berkeley: Known software packages: Orcad Pspice, LTspice,ngspice
2. Simscape: A modeling language devloped by mathwork used in MATLAB Simulink environment
3. Modelica: A model descriptive language: Known software packages: Open Modelica, Dymola

Most popular of these three is Spice 3 which is the base simulation engine for most popular and it's been modified by many company and open source projects as per need. Today almost all leading electronics simulation package are base on this. It has been modified for mix signal simulation(analog/digital) and special simulator for Power electronics(PSIM, LTSpice). The input to Spice 3 is the textual description of a circuit which is popularly known as Spice netlist. Please use a ngspice(one of the best open source spice simulator), go through it's documentation or Spice simulation of power electronics circuits(Rashid).

The application of netlist is in simulation as well as PCB design. The initial rat nest in PCB design is generated from circuit netlist file only.

a netlist is a textfile containing the description of components connection.

component id , what is its value or name and the nodes its pins are connected.

spice netlist is an input file where user writes them and use it for simulation.

also used at the vlsi design where at the end of design phase the netslist is generated from layout and used for verification.

Netlist perse is used in the PCB design for layout and routing of tracks.