====================================================================== IBIS INTERCONNECT MODELING AD HOC TASK GROUP MEETING MINUTES AND AGENDA http://www.eda.org/ibis/adhoc/interconnect/ Mailing list: ibis-interconn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ====================================================================== Next Meeting Wednesday, July 14, 2010 9 AM US Pacific Time Telephone Bridge Passcode 916-356-2663 4 173-3232 (for international and alternate US numbers, contact Michael Mirmak) LiveMeeting: https://webjoin.intel.com/?passcode=1733232 Agenda: - Attendees - Call for patents - Opens - 3 BIRDs for Touchstone 2.x Binary formatting - MCP Discussion ====================================================================== Minutes from July 7: Attendees: ---------- (* denotes present) Agilent - Radek Biernacki*, John Moore, Ken Wong Ansoft - Denis Soldo Cadence Design Systems - Terry Jernberg, Brad Griffin Cisco Systems - Mike LaBonte* 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, Raymond Y. Chen, Tao Su, Brad Brim* SiSoft - Walter Katz* Teraspeed Consulting Group - Bob Ross* ======================================================================== No patents were declared. Michael Mirmak reviewed the status of the Touchstone 2.x binary proposal. Five changes to the filed TSIRD have been logged so far, from Bob Ross, Radek Biernacki and Brad Brim: 1) Add IEEE reference to binary representations (floating-point standards) 2) Remove spaces in hexadecimal representation or note that they would be "close-packed" in an actual hex file 3) Note that hex is just present for representational clarity only; spaces inserted for readability 4) Remove the file size reduction percentages in the introductory section 5) Change "assumed significance ordering of the bits within each byte" to "assumed significance ordering of the bytes within each data word". On note 5, the word "word" refers to either 4 bytes (32 bits) or 8 bytes (64 bits) depending on the arguments of the [Binary] keyword. Bob suggested that all of these would make the current proposal TSIRD2.1. Walter Katz outlined two new proposals for treatment of binary data: 1) Remove support for ASCII data appearing after binary data in the file, as this would be difficult for parsers to handle 2) Support data ordering "by transfer function" as well as "by frequency" On Walter's first proposal, Radek indicated that he believed switching back-and-forth from ASCII to binary and back is not an issue. Walter responded that this might be hard for less experienced programmers to handle. Michael noted that the final parser may include binary conversion routines, but this has not yet been decided. Walter asked why the [End] keyword and other ASCII text after the binary section was made a requirement in files containing binary data. Michael responded that this was simply a consistency issue - whether to make the file easier to parse or the rules more streamlined. John suggested that mixing binary and ASCII could lead to reading confusion. Radek added that either approach would need error checking. Walter replied that one needs to trust the person who has written the original data, when dealing with binary, as checks may not always be possible. John asked whether there should there be an end-of-line sequence before the end-of-file. Walter ended the discussion of the first proposal by noting that he would not mind the team accepting or rejecting his proposal, and reiterated making things simple will lead to more acceptance than making things complicated. Radek replied that the parsing rules may become more complicated if file structure is simplified. On Walter's second proposal, he noted that transfer functions are data pairs (R,I etc.) under each frequency, in columns. This is not quite a transpose but is closer to how measurements are conducted in the lab. This is needed because, during file reads, parsers cannot perform random accesses easily in ASCII due to operating system differences. John added that file reading can be tricky for ASCII due to variable sizes of ASCII data. Radek noted that this proposal is not directly related to binary, as the same approach can also be used for the ASCII representation already supported. Bob asked whether this would apply globally, in the sense of mixed-mode, lower-half, etc. being unaffected. Would binary ordering be the same in such an approach? Michael suggested that these two proposals be written up as separate TSIRDs from the current binary proposal. No objections to making global (ASCII and binary) use of Walter's transfer function organization proposal in TS2.x. ------------------------------------------------------------------ The IBIS Ad Hoc Interconnect Task Group Mailing List Archives are available at: http://www.freelists.org/archives/ibis-interconn TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Send a message to "ibis-interconn-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" with a subject of "unsubscribe" To administer your subscription status from the web, visit: http://www.freelists.org/list/ibis-interconn