RE: [IBIS] EIA IBIS Open Forum Minutes (05/31/02)


Subject: RE: [IBIS] EIA IBIS Open Forum Minutes (05/31/02)
From: Matthew Flora (mflora@innoveda.com)
Date: Thu Jun 06 2002 - 11:39:39 PDT


All,

I don't know if the topic has come up before, but couldn't the IBIS
committee
give the source code to institutions of learning for free without giving
them
a license to distribute it or its derivatives? If some student or
department
develops something neat and wants to go public with it could they not come
back to the committee for permission? As bad as having to ask permission
sounds, remember that an updated version of s2ibis got cancelled because it
competed with commercial software.

Best regards,
Matthew Flora
Innoveda, Inc. (soon to be Mentor Graphics)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kim Helliwell [mailto:kimgh@apple.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 1:57 PM
> To: Al Davis
> Cc: ibis@server.eda.org
> Subject: Re: [IBIS] EIA IBIS Open Forum Minutes (05/31/02)
>
>
> I feel compelled to add something to Al Davis's
> comments on the open source proposal:
>
> On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 01:01 PM, Al Davis wrote:
>
>
> > If the parser is not open source, anyone making an open source tool
> > must make a "rival parser". The existing parser licensing
> > effectively prohibits any academic research projects from using it.
> >
> > The restriction imposed by the existing license is very far
> reaching.
> > First, it means that no open source simulator can use it, at all.
> > Second, there is a potential for many small IBIS related projects
> > that could be done by individuals or small teams, perhaps
> as academic
> > senior projects. Some examples might be viewers, validation tools,
> > extraction tools, and others. All of these are prevented by the
> > existing closed source license.
> >
>
> This is probably the crux of the issue. I assume that
> we in the IBIS community would like to see a day when
> chip vendors naturally provide correct quality IBIS
> files for all of their parts, and we users don't have to
> beg for and educate the vendors as to how to create
> quality buffer models.
>
> I've seen it deplored more than once in this list and
> in the SI list that vendors tend to hand the job of
> creating their IBIS files to junior engineers who have
> no idea how these models are used, and therefore
> they make ludicrous mistakes. They don't know
> any better, and there is no one to teach them.
>
> This state of affairs could change if the Golden Parser
> were available to Universities and encouragement
> were given to build senior projects on top of the
> parser, as Al suggests. At least some of the junior
> engineers coming from our Universities would have
> had some exposure to IBIS and might therefore be
> better prepared for taking over the task of creating
> models.
>
> It is highly probable, also, that the bulk of the
> contributors of bug fixes and new functionality
> would come from highly motivated University
> students in CSEE departments.
>
> In short, if we really want to see improvements in
> the IBIS models we get from vendors, we in the
> IBIS community ought to make IBIS more accessible
> to the students who are the future chip designers.
> And one really good way to do this is to get over
> our parochial concerns about funding models and
> GPL the Golden Parser, and MAKE SURE that
> every EE and CSEE department in the world has
> access to that code.
>
> Kim Helliwell
> Apple Computer
> kimgh@apple.com
> 408 974 9936
>
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