====================================================================== 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, August 26, 2008 8 AM US Pacific Time Telephone Bridge Passcode 916-356-2663 3 524-1412 (for international and alternate US numbers, contact Michael Mirmak) LiveMeeting: https://webjoin.intel.com/?passcode=5241412 Agenda: - Call for patents - Opens - Discuss specification language for sparse matrices ====================================================================== Minutes from August 19: 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 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 announced. During opens, Michael mentioned that several sets of minutes still need to be posted to the website. He also noted that the freelists.org website may not archive all presentation material or attachments sent across the ibis-interconn list. Michael presented an overview of three recent proposals altering the sparse matrix approach discussed in recent weeks. Two of these were from Walter Katz, while a third was from Radek Biernacki. Walter noted that one of his proposals assumed existing network data would be maintained, with organization by frequency (Katz #1). His other proposal was by "framis" with completely new associations replacing organization by frequency. The team agreed that Katz #1 and Radek's proposal were highly similar and could be combined or addressed in the same proposal language. Radek noted that his proposal was slightly more compact and did not support unique names for the groups of identical matrices. Walter noted that Katz #1 associates each framis with a column of data and permits repeated use of the same label. Michael asked why repetition is needed. Walter responded that this need is application-specific, with high utility for packages. Numbers can be replaced with pin names in that case. Radek objected that a 500 case model would require 500 lines in Katz #1, due to the line break approach. This would occur for a 100x100 matrix (100 ports) where only 500 distinct data pairs are needed for the 10,000 possibilities. In that case, Either 499 colons are needed to separate the data pairs, or 500 lines, each with a distinct pair. Variants discussed included 1: (x,y) (x,y) (x,y) 2: (x,y) (x,y) (x,y) 1 (x,y) (x,y) (x,y) : 2 (x,y) (x,y) (x,y) : 3... Walter advocated ending lines with a colon character. Bob suggested eliminating colons altogether, while John noted that numbers and identifiers could be removed as well. In response to a question from Michael, Walter noted that Katz #2 is a separate proposal for a completely new data format. If this was better considered separately, he would raise it at a later date. He added that organization by group and not frequency seemed more reasonable. Bob responded that he would prefer to keep network data defined as done today in Touchstone/Touchstone 2.0. Radek requested that duplicate entries for framis/column be eliminated, with identifiers being made optional. Bob commented that numbers would be acceptable, with naming to be handled through [Begin Information]/ [End Information]. Michael will type up a suitable proposal for consideration next time.