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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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Next Meeting
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
8 AM US Pacific Time

               Telephone     Bridge   Passcode
              916-356-2663     3      583-2430

http://tinyurl.com/6gp8sp

Meeting ID:     9c46c778a6c545ad991d9c545043ed09
Location:       
meet:sip:michael.mirmak@xxxxxxxxx;gruu;opaque=app:conf:focus:id:9c46c778a6c545ad991d9c545043ed09

Agenda:
- Call for patents
- Opens
- Review and Closure of new draft for Open Forum submission

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Minutes from October 8:

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*
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*

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No patents were announced.

Michael called for comments on the current draft Touchstone 2.0 specification.
Bob noted that keywords such as [Interconnect Port Order] may be useful
as informational contributions.  He suggested that the group not open up the
document for new keywords or new sections, as this should not be required
for this stage of development.

Rob Elliott suggested adding a count of ports in the syntax, so that the
total number of port groups is explicit.

Michael noted that the optional nature of the [Interconnect Port Groups]
keyword was not noted explicitly in the text, but should be.

Walter proposed several additions and changes to the document syntax:
- a new section called [Interconnect Information] with a matching ending
  keyword
- reorganize port order to include only one group per line
- add a port name section, with a logical name (similar to the IBIS signal name)
- add a differential port section
- allow 1.0 as a legal argument to [Version]
- add an explicit [Data] keyword to offset the network parameter data

He also noted that the use of IBIS-style syntax may have been a mistake,
in terms of parsing.

Rob added that he had tested a provisional addition to StatEye to parse
Touchstone 2.0 with [Interconnect Port Groups], and it worked very well.
he suggested that underscores within keywords would make parsing easier.
He also reiterated that having a total port count for [Interconnect Port Groups]
was needed to ease parsing as well.  Finally, he added that the extension
".ts2" made the most sense and would avoid confusing current parsers
sensitive to the file extension.

Bob and Walter agreed that the single-ended orientation of the specification
should remain.  Radek expressed disagreement with the concept of [Interconnect 
Port Groups]
as it may be too narrow an application for a relatively widely accepted
specification.

A vote was taken on including or removing [Interconnect Port Groups].  Comments
and results are noted below:

        Agilent - Remove; but recognizes support for the application is needed 
in some form
        Ansoft  - Include
        HP      - Include
        Intel   - Include; the format is negotiable, in that 
application-specific keywords
                           could be grouped or included in other ways
        Mentor Graphics - Abstain; perhaps this should not be included in this 
version
        SiSoft    - Include
        Teraspeed - Include

Bob and Walter offered to resolve remaining issues and put forth formal 
proposal language
for the next meeting, in order to close the document and forward for 
consideration by
the IBIS Open Forum.

AR: Michael to provide raw .doc form of the draft to Bob and Walter - DONE

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Team Objectives:
1) complete ICM-IBIS linking BIRD and any associated changes to the
   ICM specification
2) update the ICM specification, if needed, to clarify the mapping of
   ICM nodes to S-parameter ports
3) complete a specification for "Touchstone Plus" or similar
   industry-standard definition for Touchstone-like files, to include
   complex impedance references, removal of limits on the maximum number
   of ports and per-port impedance references

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