Minutes, IBIS Quality Committee 28 Feb 2012 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: - Mike: Unable to meet next week AR Review: - Mike update checklist - Done New items: Mike showed the IBIS free tools page: - Mike: Have there been support requests for s2ibis3? - Lance: There are some installation requests - Also some enhancement requests - Spectre support is a problem - Many want to know how to use it with ODT - Mike: Is s2ibis still being used for production? - Lance: Many have their own tools or commercial tools Bob: AMI quality remains a useful project - The parser is the best bet for that - Money is an issue - Mike: Major releases are taking longer, so income is lower - Should 5.2 be 6.0? - Bob: I would advocate that - We have an accounting problem too - Mike showed the ibischk5 page - Mike: It has been released 7 times, purchased once - Bob: We sold 15 licenses so far - One new member may join the forum - Synopsys bought Magna, so now they only need one license - Mentor acquired InnovEDA - People are still finding bugs - Cadence found one, they must be using the parser Mike: Could we add any features to sell more parsers? - Bob: Some say we should raise price - Another idea is to charge for IBISCHK - We are stabilizing IBISCHK - Some companies are ahead of the spec - Mike: That may stop them from buying the parser - The AMI format should not suffer that problem Bob: People do not have the same understanding the spec now - Mike: That sounds like what Greg's AMI checklist was addressing - Bob: Models from one vendor do not work in other tools - The 5.0 spec is ambiguous - Mike: It is also insufficient for some features that must be modeled Mike: Do we ever get feedback on the parser code style? - Anders: Agilent reported something 4 years ago - Also the error number idea - Bob: We didn't do the Agilent request Mike showed IBISCHK bug 132: - Bob: [Model Selector] within [Notes] causes a crash - Mike: This is partly because we don't have [End Notes] - Mike: Is the Agilent request a numbered bug? - Bob: No - We get a lot of requests that we don't number Mike: Should we do a survey about the usefulness of the parser? - Lance: No one will buy if the checker tool is free - It is too easy to write your own parser - Those who buy are really just supporting IBIS - Bob: People who write their own tend to get it wrong - They also add their own features - Mike: We are supporting an important tool by contributions - It's like public radio: free, but you can pay if you want - Should we raise open forum membership dues? - Lance: JEITA has high fees but they give good benefits - Some documents and data are for members only - There is IBIS quality data like simulator comparisons, for example - The membership is something like $10,000 - Parser price $2500 x 15 = $37500 - We have paid about $21,000 for 5.0 work - Bob: We will not make it past 5.1 Next meetings: - Next meetings Mar 20 and Apr 17 Mar 20 agenda: - Discuss IBISCHK5 parser expansion for AMI Meeting ended at 12:38 Eastern Time.