Minutes, IBIS Quality Committee

13 December 2011

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

ROLL CALL

Cisco Systems:                  Tony Penaloza
Ericsson:                     * Anders Ekholm
Green Streak Programs:          Lynne Green
Huawei Technologies:            Guan Tao
IBM:                            Bruce Archambeault
                                Greg Edlund
IOMethodology:                  Lance Wang
Mentor Graphics:                John Angulo
Micron Technology:              Moshiul Haque,
                                Randy Wolff
Nokia Siemens Networks:       * Eckhard Lenski
QLogic Corp.:                   James Zhou
Signal Consulting Group:        Tim Coyle
Signal Integrity Software     * Mike LaBonte
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:

- Anders: WebEx issues

- Anders: Would like to receive latest External Test document

AR: Mike report on status of External Test BIRD 

- Bob: We seem to be losing critical mass
  - Attendance in these meetings is dropping

AR Review:

- Mike to ask Greg about time change
  - Email sent

New items:

Group direction:
- Anders: It may be too early to work on AMI quality
- Bob: It's hard to do this when the new IBIS version is in flux
  - Greg's checklist is only a minimal starting point
- Mike: We had discussed moving the meeting an hour later
  - We have no confirmation that this would help Greg
- Anders: That would be worse for me
- Mike: We could have less meetings
- Bob: We might suspend
- Anders: With a proposed cutoff time for BIRDs, should we review?
- Mike: The ATM group is for technical discussion
  - The editorial group for other matters
- Bob: The editorial work is not very interesting
  - Michael has folded passed BIRDs into a draft
  - We are stalled until everything is in the MSWord document
  - The AMI section structure is unsustainable as it stands
  - AMI versioning means we have to support a cumulative document
    - The parser has to change based on the AMI version
- Mike: We could meet every 3 weeks
- Eckhard: If we will discuss AMI that will not be enough
- We decided to meet every two weeks

- The next meeting will be Jan 10

We reviewed existing IBISCHK parser bugs related to AMI:

BUG 124:
- Bob: This is a pipe comment problem related to whitespace

BUG 125:
- Bob: The Format keyword is repeated, and this is not checked
  - The IBIS spec implies but does not say that repeated keywords are not allowed
  - This is garbage AMI code that passes the parser
- Mike: Also the order of keywords must not matter
- Bob: It should be a parser error if a read-in keyword is seen again

BUG 126:
- Bob: extra words after the keyword are simply not detected
- Mike: The language used in the spec about parameters is not clear
  - Some words are overloaded
  - "String" can be a parameter value or the whole text sent to a DLL
- Bob: We are now adding things like a string language within a parameter
- Mike: Would a numeric value in double quotes fail the parser?
- Bob: No

BUG 127:
- Mike: This looks like 126
- Bob: It is fatal when the extra word is at the top level
- Mike: We don't know if ERROR_FATAL or (Description is the problem
- Bob: Description can appear anywhere in the file
- Mike: Tools would not know what to do with it except in a parameter

BUG 128:
- Mike: This is top level section duplication
  - A rule that no keyword may be repeated at any level would catch this
- Bob: We should have generally stated rules "except where otherwise stated"

Mike: Should this group maintain it's own set of parser regression tests?
- Bob: It may be too big a task
  - The tests are cumulative, the set grows forever
- Mike: The tests are available only to those who pay for the parser
  - We could propose to the Open Forum that tests should be openly available
- Bob: Recent parsers have been breaking old tests
- Mike: The test platform might be an issue
- Bob: Some tests are related to bugs that have been fixed
  - Complexity has grown over time
  - It's hard to have enough tests now
  - The Touchstone parser has a lot of tests
  - This is released only to those who pay for the parser
  - The parser distinguishes between versions and that is tested

Next meetings:
- Next meetings Jan 10 and Jan 24

Jan 10 agenda:
- Form list of new IBISCHK5 parser bugs for AMI

Meeting ended at 12:37 Eastern Time.