====================================================================== IBIS INTERCONNECT MODELING AD HOC TASK GROUP MEETING MINUTES AND AGENDA http://www.eda.org/ibis/adhoc/interconnect/ Mailing list: ibis-interconn@freelists.org ====================================================================== Next Meeting Wednesday, March 17, 2010 9 AM US Pacific Time Telephone Bridge Passcode 916-356-2663 5 309-6842 (for international and alternate US numbers, contact Michael Mirmak) Live Meeting: http://tinyurl.com/yzo768q or: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/sisoft/join?id=M462B6&role=attend&pw=P9%3D8%3BP%277b Agenda: - Attendence - Call for patents - Opens - Model Connection Protocol (tentative) - Binary syntax proposal (tentative) ====================================================================== Minutes from March 10, 2010: Attendees: ---------- (* denotes present) Agilent - Radek Biernacki, John Moore, Ken Wong Ansoft - Denis Soldo Cadence Design Systems - Terry Jernberg, Brad Griffin Green Streak Programs - Lynne Green Hewlett-Packard - Rob Elliott IBM - Greg Edlund* Intel - Michael Mirmak Mentor Graphics Corp. - John Angulo, Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov Micron Technology - Randy Wolff* Sigrity - Sam Chitwood, Brad Brim* SiSoft - Walter Katz* Teraspeed Consulting Group - Bob Ross* ======================================================================== No patents were announced. Opens - None OVERVIEW OF PROPOSALS Walter Katz briefly showed the Model Connection Protocol (MCP) connectivity between die, package, board from an some earlier by Brad Brim. Walter then showed showed the general connection problem as addressed by other existing and proposed formats including Electrical Board Description (EBD), possible Electrical Modual Description (EMB), and possible IBIS Interconnect Spice Subcircuit format (IBIS-ISS). The summary is uploaded at http://www.eda.org/ibis/adhoc/interconnect/EBD_Morf_IMCP.txt Walter commented that for some applications the MCP is difficult to apply. The comments and various topics associated with the proposal were considered in an open discussion. The issue of who produces the protocol was raised, and it might be a combination of IC vendors or the EDA tools themselves. There was some discussion concerning connector vendors issuing mostly Spice models of just a section of a connector, and that might pose a challenge for applying the MCP. The MCP appears to target dies with an X-Y position alternative to specify connection points. MODEL CONNECTION PROTOCOL The concensus was still to consider a MCP proposal when it is ready. The primary consideration is that several vendors are already using this methodology, and that it is valuable for at least a subset of the general interconnect problem. It might have advantages for power integrity applications. The fact that the protocol is implemented with the comment characters that are format specific means that the specification process does not involve additing to other specifications. The MCP protocol would be transparent. Brad will continue working on the MCP document and possibly introduce it at the next meeting to be considered as an independent specification. BINARY ENCODING Greg Edlund asked how to format of the proposal. Bob Ross indicated that it would use the existing Touchstone 2.0 Word document template, but written up as a separate binary encoding section. Walter indicated that some code that does the conversions would be nice to have. The code could come from IBM, but Bob mentioned that a parser developer might also produce the converion utility. Bob will work with Greg off-line on document preparation issues. NEXT MEETING Model Connection Protocol introduction if ready is the primary topic for introduction a the next meeting. Depending on status, the binary encoding section might also be discussed.