Minutes, IBIS Quality Committee

21 June 2011

11:00-12:00 EST (08:00-09:00 PST)

ROLL CALL

Cisco Systems:                * Mike LaBonte
Ericsson:                     * Anders Ekholm
Green Streak Programs:          Lynne Green
Huawei Technologies:            Guan Tao
IBM:                            Bruce Archambeault
IOMethodology:                  Lance Wang
Mentor Graphics:                John Angulo
Micron Technology:            * Moshiul Haque,
                                Randy Wolff
Nokia Siemens Networks:       * Eckhard Lenski
Signal Consulting Group:        Tim Coyle
Teraspeed Consulting Group:   * Bob Ross
Texas Instruments:              Pavani Jella

Everyone in attendance marked by *

NOTE: "AR" = Action Required.

-----------------------MINUTES ---------------------------
Mike LaBonte conducted the meeting.

Call for opens and IBIS related patent disclosures:

- No one declared a patent.

AR Review:

- Mike update Test Keyword Clarification BIRD
  - Done

- Mike contact Tim Coyle about limited positioning within Model
  - Done
  - No reply so far

New items:

Mike: Greg Edlund asked about quality checks for AMI:
  - Has this come up at any summit?
- Bob: Some best practice issues have been discussed
  - Some have talked about DLL checking
  - The checker only checks about 10% for AMI files
    - It misses major errors
  - The reference platforms created a few years ago could check DLLs
  - Also HSPICE claims to have DLL checker
- Mike: All of these might be made available under Free Tools
- Bob: There are possible issues
  - Whether they read AMI files correctly
  - Whether they use the DLL correctly
  - We need to know what Greg has in mind
- Mike: It should be limited to simple sanity checks
  - See if the DLL is loadable and has the right functions
  - It should not test accuracy
- Bob: It should be a standardized test too, not an EDA platform
- Mike: Greg is invited to join is to talk about it

Mike showed the revised BIRD:
- Anders: It may be confusing to show [Test Data] before [End]
- We discussed where to position [Test Data] and [Test Load] in the hierarchy.
- Bob: It should go after [Submodel] and before [External Circuit]
- Anders: Test data & load call the models, not the other way around
- Mike: Tim seems to be OK with [Test Load] being placed anywhere
- Bob: Some parser changes may be needed to support top level functionality
  - [Test Load] ahead of [Test Data] may be a problem
  - We should document know parser changes required before submitting the BIRD
- Anders: Where is the [Test Load] name?
- Mike: It is described in the section
- Bob: We should have shown those in the hierarchy

Anders: Would this break any existing model?
- Mike: This is why we contacted Tim Coyle
  - There are FPGA IBIS files with [Test Load] only, no [Test Data]
- Eckhard: I had to comment those out to make tools work
- Bob: The change would make it a problem to have [Test Data] ahead of
  [Model] sub-keywords.
- Anders: That is a problem because the spec says you can do that

Mike: IBIS 5.0 would continue to allow [Test Data] before [Model] sub-keywords
  - But we could leave BUG 104 unfixed
  - BUG 104 would be voided by our change
    - There would be one namespace for all [Test Data]
    - There would be one namespace for all [Test Load]
- Bob: 
- Anders: This doesn't solve the complete problem
  - You can have [Test Data] after a [Model] that refers to another [Model]
- Mike: This is a quick cleanup
  - We will develop our new external test and hopefully that will dominate
- Anders: Agree, things will remain that we don't like

Anders; Should this be brought up at the open forum this Friday?
- Bob: We probably are not ready
- Mike: I will not be there
- Anders: I will not either

Bob: We need to read the description sections carefully:
- We should check that [Test Data] does not come after the wrong model
- There was a 5.1 editorial meeting yesterday
  - 5.1 will simply be reformatted
  - After that how do we fold in BIRDs?
  - The left side pipe will be absent
- Mike: This BIRD is based on 5.0 line numbers
- Bob: That is not a problem
  - No BIRDs will require rewriting
  - Other BIRDs are pending
  - If this is done in time it could go into 5.1
  - We may render some things illegal that were legal before

AR: Mike send BIRD draft to list

AR: Bob conduct tests of parser behavior

Next meetings:
- Next meetings June 28 and July 5

June 21 agenda:
- Test Keyword Clarification BIRD draft

Meeting ended at 12:18 Eastern Time.