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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/ 

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Attendees from May 8, 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 May 1, 2019 meeting.
Mike LaBonte moved to approve the minutes.  Bob Ross seconded.  The minutes were
approved without objection.

  
Review of ARs:
- Mike to email the IBIS List and SI List a reminder about the Touchstone survey
  and note the end date.
  - Mike reported he has noted the end date in the social media posts, but he has
    not posted to the reflector yet.  SAE has posted the survey on their social
 	media pages including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  He will wait a few
	more days and send the reminder to the IBIS List and SI List.  At the moment,
	we have 60 responses to the survey.


Opens:
Bob noted that, for the IBIS-ISS, the parser developer suggested that we look at
Ngspice or Berkeley SPICE as a basis for the parser.  Bob asked if there would be
any licensing concerns with this approach.  Michael noted there could be
restrictions in the license agreements preventing us for doing this.  To his
knowledge, the source code is available for sale from Berkley, but we would have
to look at the license terms.  Arpad Muranyi asked how the license would transfer
to EDA companies who want to sell their software.  Michael suggested we would
have to have an attorney to review the terms of the license.  Mike noted that we
are covered for the current parser developer contract which specifies that any
open source code used in the parser shall be approved by the IBIS Open Forum.


EMD Comments Review:
Bob shared a presentation that detailed the supporting files used for IBIS.  He
noted that IBIS now has 17 file types.  He breaks the file types down by official
files with parser support, official IBIS with no parser, and formats managed by
other standards.  He discussed the possibility of having an .emd file as the
top-level file similar to .ebd and an .ems as a file similar to .ims.  Bob
described the linkages possible with .ebd and .ibs files and .ebd files using
other .ebd files.  The proposed EMD format would use a [Reference Designator Map]
keyword to link to other EMD and .ibs files.  He noted .ems files would have
references to ISS and touchstone.  He suggested we could change
[Reference Designator Map] to [Electrical Module Designator Map].  We should
avoid the Interconnect Model keyword names and use Electrical Module where the
rules are different to make things clear.

Mike asked if this comes down to the order things appear in the specification.
Bob replied the issue is that EMD is close to the Interconnect Modeling format,
but they are not exactly the same.  He thought to use the same names would lead
to confusion about which rules apply.  Mike suggested to keep this in mind as we
make changes.  Bob suggested to make these changes up front and start the editing
process with a clean baseline.  Mike suggested to see an example of the changes.
Walter Katz suggested to have Bob make the changes he would like to see, and he
is okay with these name changes.  Bob noted [Reference Designator Map] is one
change he is unsure of.  Walter suggested for Bob to go ahead and make this
change.  Bob to make the name changes to the EMD proposal he is recommending [AR].


Bob commented on the Interconnect Model example from Micron that it would be good
to have a listing of the model Groups in the [Notes] section.  He suggested to
highlight the differences between the models with this Groups list.  Randy Wolff
noted it is not easy to document all this information and suggested we need to
think this if there is a standard way to document this information.  Bob noted
the [Notes] section is parsable format, while the comments cannot be parsed.

Walter asked if there is a description field.  Justin replied there is a
[Description] keyword, but it applies to only the Set and not for the Group.  Bob
suggested the EDA tool can process this information to display the descriptions
for all the Sets in the Group.  Randy suggested we could propose a [Description]
field for the Group.


Next Meeting:
The next meeting will be May 15.


Arpad moved to adjourn.  Randy seconded.  The meeting adjourned without
objection.


EMD Comments to be Resolved:
1. Change top level keywords to distinguish between EMD and Interconnect Models
2. Add Touchstone to the introduction
3. Clarify the meaning of signal_type
4. File format structure


IBIS-ISS Parser:
- Bob to contact the parser developer for initial thoughts