Minutes, IBIS Quality Committee

24 January 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:

- None

AR Review:

- Bob upload IBISCHK5 message spreadsheet to web
  - Done

New items:

Mike showed the IBISCHK5 message spreadsheet:
- Bob: I have asked Atul to stop working on this, focus on 5.1 work
  - Funding for parser work is an issue
  - Some messages are not used, not sure why
- Mike: We should try to address the parser work funding problem
  - We could make the BUG process more efficient
  - We could write a synopsis of required changes
- Bob: We normally guide Atul on what to change
  - The bug reports are a start
  - There are 11 AMI BIRDs passed so far that impact the parser
  - We have sold 15 5.0 parsers
  - We had a major profit 2 years ago and prepaid Atul
  - We are cashing in on that now
- Mike: Does any tool actually use it as a parser front end?
  - We could have an API making it easy to integrate the parser into IBIS viewers
- Bob: There are actually 4 parsers, and the AMI parser is weak
  - Work is going slowly
  - I usually formulate the list of changes

Bob showed a summary of IBIS 5.1 feature changes:
- Mike: Some of these are not enough to implement from
- Bob: This gives the big picture
  - Some items say NO ACTION, but I might have missed some things
  - 5.1 syntax will be treated as 5.0
  - The same rules will be used for files declaring either 5.0 or 5.1
  - We could enforce the requirement for Format in 5.0, not sure
  - Mostly we need to document what the rules are
  - It will still enforce rules previous to 5.0
- Mike: We might use the approach of keeping old checks in old parsers
- Bob: We had a case where IBISCHK5 broke a 4.2 check
  - Overall it is best the way it is

Greg gave an overview of his DesignCON presentation:
- It starts with a "state of the union"
- An overview of the quality checklist
- Model to hardware correlation
  - Have a template we use for reports

Mike showed the latest AMI checklist working document:
- Greg: I will not be showing all of these
- Mike: Will the analog model come up?
- Greg: Users need to know what assumptions are made
  - Currently the classic IBIS keywords are used
- Mike: Various simulators give different results
- Bob: The best we can do is document
- Greg: We need to ask suppliers to explain it all
- Mike: Examples of what documentation should include would help
  - Useful models today require vendor specific features, and that should be said
- Bob: Even 5.1 does not solve the problems
- Mike: Some models have issues related to passed BIRDs
- Bob: There is a question as to when to deliver parser changes
  - We might deliver changes simultaneous with the spec release

Next meetings:
- Next meetings Feb 7 and 21

Feb 7 agenda:

- Discuss IBISCHK5 parser expansion for AMI

Meeting ended at 12:13 Eastern Time.