I may have finally figured out how to tape-out my own analog IC designs without draining my bank account. even though I did poorly in analog IC design at school, I've wanted to know what it would take to start a company that designs analog ICs and RFICs. This super old article on EDN Network is very short and lacks detail, but it essentially shows how CAD software is unneccessary and fabrication can be cheaper using a service like MOSIS; it shows how it would be possible for anyone like me to start designing my own ICs.

CAD, or computer aided design, tools usually comes with a simulator and layout tool. The simulator is important because they help engineers simulate complex circuits with some level of accuracy before spending lots of money to fabricate a prototype. The layout tool can check if a design complies with the fabrication equipment's design rules. CAD can save lots of time and money by eliminating design iterations. However, the cost for something like what I used in school can run well over millions per year

After some more digging and thinking I found that LTSpice, a free SPICE simulator I've played with, actually can run BSIM3 models. BSIM3 is a highly parametric transistor model sufficiently accurate for analog IC simulation. It's actually the same model I used in school through Cadence. Simulating my designs would be a matter of finding the model parameters for the fabrication technology.

Once I found the article I did some more digging and found that LTSpice IV, a free circuit simulator