================================================================================ IBIS INTERCONNECT TASK GROUP http://www.ibis.org/interconnect_wip/ Mailing list: ibis-interconnect@freelists.org Archives at http://www.freelists.org/archive/ibis-interconn/ ================================================================================ Attendees from April 3, 2019 Meeting (* means attended at least using audio) ANSYS Curtis Clark Cadence Design Systems Bradley Brim* Intel Corp. Michael Mirmak* Keysight Technologies Radek Biernacki Mentor, A Siemens Business Arpad Muranyi* Micron Technology Justin Butterfield*, Randy Wolff* SiSoft Walter Katz, Mike LaBonte* Teraspeed Labs Bob Ross* Michael Mirmak convened the meeting. No patents were declared. Justin Butterfield took minutes. Review of Minutes: - Michael called for review of the minutes from the March 27, 2019 meeting. Mike LaBonte moved to approve the minutes. Brad Brim seconded. The minutes were approved without objection. Review of ARs: - Michael and Mike to draft an email survey to the SI list on the usage of Touchstone 2.0 models. - Michael reported that we will discuss this today. - Mike to post draft 2 of the EMD BIRD to the website. - Mike reported this is done. Opens: - Justin noted that he has some examples using the IBIS 7.0 Interconnect Model syntax. He would like to spend some time in an upcoming meeting to discuss the examples. He can send them out, but it is a large .zip file. Mike suggested he can create an FTP account for these purposes. He asked if this information can be shared publicly. Justin replied the files can be shared publicly. Michael suggested to highlight the unofficial nature of the example files. EMD Draft Comments Review: Michael asked if Walter Katz had received any feedback on the EMD draft. Walter responded that he has not. Bob Ross stated he looked it over and noted that there is a lot of BIRD189 material that would be redundant if we add this to the IBIS specification. He also commented that EMD is only at the pin interface. He suggested to include bus_label connections, as signal_name is a subset of bus_label. Walter commented there are two interfaces in EMD, one for the external pins and one for the internal pins. But, you could interpret this as one interface. For bus_label, the only information we have about the IBIS file is the pin_name. Walter stated he is not opposed to including bus_label, but we should be careful. Bob commented we will need to consider this further. Michael asked if EMD would be a BIRD going to the IBIS Open Forum for a vote. Walter noted this is a BIRD and was written as part of IBIS much like EBD. Michael asked if we want to submit it to the IBIS Open Forum or review it here. Walter noted there are editorial changes that need to be done, but he would like to submit it to have a number assigned. Bob stated we should start editing it right away and wait to submit the BIRD to the Open Forum. Michael suggested to have a formal review draft. Michael gave an AR to everyone to take a look and provide feedback on the latest EMD draft [AR]. Bob suggested to report on the EMD work during the Interconnect Task Group update in the upcoming Open Forum meeting and note that we will be reviewing the draft before submitting it as a BIRD. Michael will bring up the EMD draft as part of his Interconnect Task Group update [AR]. Touchstone industry mail draft review: Michael stated that we had agreed to send out an industry email to solicit feedback on the direction of the Touchstone format standard. He would like to address the comments sent out over the reflector. Bob asked if the plan is to collect the feedback privately or publicly. Michael stated he doesn't have a preference. Mike suggested we could use a survey tool, such as Survey Monkey, to create the survey and collect the responses. Bob thought that private responses might bring in more results versus a public discussion. Walter stated he likes Mike's idea of using Survey Monkey and people can always reply to the survey publicly. Bob commented we already know that Touchstone 1 is the de facto format in the industry. The fundamental question is should more work be done to Touchstone 2.0, and if so, what features should be added. Walter stated, in IBIS, we have a rule that you can take any IBIS file and increase the IBIS version, and it will still be a legal file. We have a commitment to backward compatibility in IBIS, and this is where we failed with Touchstone 2.0. Michael asked if we have the same backward compatibility for AMI. Walter noted there were a few parameters which were deprecated, but this was due to a mistake, and the deprecation was very painful. Bob commented that there is a compatibility path between Touchstone versions. Walter suggested that the bracketed keywords could be optional and Touchstone 1 files would work in the parser. Michael suggested that one of the goals of the survey is to determine if this is the biggest reason that Touchstone 2.0 has not been widely adopted. Walter suggested to add an additional paragraph and question to the survey to ask if we should go back to Touchstone 1 and add features to it. Bob commented that there are things we could have done differently with Touchstone 2.0. He asked about the IEEE P370 group's thoughts on Touchstone 2.0, and why they are not using it. Michael noted he has presented on Touchstone 2.0 to the P370 group and most of the questions were around the port identifier. He stated we can ask their thoughts on the future direction of Touchstone. Michael noted feedback on the email from Brad was to mention the TSIRDs. He did add a link to the approved TSIRDs. He edited the email to list out the new features of Touchstone 2.0. Brad suggested to add a question asking if respondents have heard of Touchstone 2.0. Mike suggested to preface questions 2 and 3 and to make them conditional on question 1. Walter suggested that he would like different questions regarding a new Touchstone 1.x. Michael noted that he has assumed that the revision numbers are going up. The more specific questions that we ask the more we skew the results. Walter would like to see questions about touchstone 1. Brad noted we need to go ask about the needs in the industry. Walter commented we have heard from multiple sources that people need port information. Michael will send out the email questions as it is now [AR]. He would also like to get other thoughts on who to send the survey to in addition to the SI list and the IBIS list, as there are measurement oriented people that may not be on those email lists. Arpad Muranyi suggested to ask the measurement tool vendors to help with this. Bob asked if the responses are anonymous or not. Michael noted we still need to decide how the results will be collected and reviewed. Mike noted noted the Interconnect list has about 25 people all who are likely respondents of the survey. He asked if it is okay to send the draft email to the Interconnect list. Arpad suggested to send out to only the people in the meeting for now. Next Meeting: The next meeting will be April 10. Mike moved to adjourn. Arpad seconded. The meeting adjourned without objection. Topic Bin List: 1. IBIS 7.0 Interconnect model examples from Micron.