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IBIS INTERCONNECT MODELING AD HOC TASK GROUP MEETING MINUTES AND AGENDA

http://www.eda.org/ibis/adhoc/interconnect/

Mailing list: ibis-interconn@freelists.org

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Minutes from April 21, 2010:

Attendees:
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(* 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*, Lijun Jiang, Yaping Zhou
Intel                      - Michael Mirmak*
I/O Methodology		   - Lance Wang
Mentor Graphics Corp.      - John Angulo*, Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Micron Technology          - Justin Butterfield, Randy Wolff
Sigrity                    - Sam Chitwood, Raymond Y. Chen, Tao Su, Brad Brim
SiSoft                     - Walter Katz
Teraspeed Consulting Group - Bob Ross*
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No patents were announced.  No opens were raised.

Michael Mirmak reported that, per his AR, the Touchstone 2.0 specification
only implies that whitespace does not include line-termination sequences,
as part of the syntax definition in the document.  This may be revised in
a future release.

The team reviewed the current Touchstone 2.0 Binary proposal, draft 5, and
noted the following issues to be resolved:

- "Both the T1 and T2 tokens shall use the same.." should be "characters".
- Bob Ross requested that the document keep argument case-sensitivity.
- The third token.. -> character 
- Case number agreement should be checked on the word "argument" vs "arguments"
- Greg Edlund requested that it be legal to put comments in the network data 
  plaintext input (keep text as-is).  Binary conversion will remove the data.
- Bob noted that, following [Network Data], a comment line appears; remove it.  Check line-feeds as well.

Bob asked whether the comments will be converted through "dumb" conversion;
in other words, that the comments in ASCII might be misinterpreted as binary
data. Michael responded that smart conversion should be a requirement in the final 
parser/converter.

Bob requested that the document state that binary conversion will remove comments and other illegal items.

Michael asked whether having any language about the converter/conversion process in the spec itself is desirable.

Bob outlined his vision for a separate section in the specification, with some mention of every 
output resulting from the conversion.  The converter would be expected to supply keyword [Binary] 
and argument, plus strip out illegal portions.  Separate header information?

John Angulo added that a valid Touchstone ASCII file must be assumed as the input, to result in a 
valid binary file.  Bob asked whether the team should support parser simultaneous conversion 
from Touchstone to Touchstone 2.1 binary.

John recommended that the example in the text representing just a few numbers in binary; not a large set. 

Michael asked whether the specification needs to document the specifics of the conversion, 
such as all the machine specifics mentioned by Radek in the last meeting.  Bob accepted an AR to track 
down industry specifications covering these details.

Michael switched topics to propose conversion of the Touchstone specification document to use an existing 
standard style, perhaps from ANSI or the IEEE.  Bob suggested the JEDEC style manual as an additional option.  
This conversion would permit easier editing, use of drawings and would more easily be approved when 
submitted for standardization.  Michael also observed that this might provide a demonstration or test 
bed for converting larger documents, such as the main IBIS specification itself.

Bob suggested that some formats use interim line-numbers for drafts, which makes editing even more easy.

One comprehensive style manual is available free on-line from the IEEE:
http://standards.ieee.org/guides/style/index.html

Michael noted that he will be traveling for three weeks starting April 25,
And asked Bob to run the meeting in his absence.  He also asked whether
SiSoft would be willing to host the LiveMeeting during that time. 
Arrangements will be made offline.

AR: Bob Ross - track down industry specs used for binary conversion and provide list to the team