Minutes, IBIS Quality Task Group

8 September 2020

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

ROLL CALL

Achronix Semiconductor:           * Hansel Dsilva
Intel Corp.                         Michael Mirmak
Mentor, a Siemens Business          Arpad Muranyi
Micron Technology                 * Randy Wolff
Signal Integrity Software:        * Mike LaBonte
SPISim                              Wei-hsing Huang
Teraspeed Labs:                   * Bob Ross
Zuken USA:                        * Lance Wang

Everyone in attendance marked by *

NOTE: "AR" = Action Required.

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

Call for IBIS related patent disclosures:

- None

Call for opens:

- None

Review of previous meeting minutes:
Minutes from the September 1 meeting were reviewed.  Randy Wolff moved to approve.
Lance Wang seconded. Without objection the minutes were approved.


ARs:
- Mike LaBonte to update and upload IBISCHK7.0.2 user guide and spreadsheet
  - Done

NOTE: "AR" = Action Required.


BIRD181.2:
No new discussion.


New parser bugs:
Bob Ross reported there were no new bug reports.


IBISCHK 7.0.2 development:
Bob Ross said there was no new word on payment status.


Tabled topics (no discussion without motion):
  - IBIS-ISS parser

Randy Wolff asked if the home page banner had been updated to "NEW: IBISCHK7.0.2".
Mike said the request had been made but he had not seen the update yet.

Randy Wolff moved to untable the IBIS-IIS parser topic.
Mike LaBonte seconded. There were no objections.
Mike recapped previous discussions in the topic.

Bob Ross said Atul Agarwal had previously provided a quote for an IBIS_ISS parser
that would be based on open source Berkeley SPICE code. Bob said different levels of
parsing were possible.  Mike described 3 possible levels:
1 - Syntax parsing only, no memory structures and no cross checking of items.
2 - Store structures in memory to allow use as a front end for tools.
3 - Cross checking of items after the file has been read into memory.

Bob said the Berkeley license agreement would have to be embedded.  Mike suggested
gauging IBIS community interest in having a parser. Mike felt demand for the source code
might not be strong. As was the case with the tschk2 parser, tool makers already had
their own parsers and would not need a new one, even if it was the official parser. He
also suggested that a parser could be coded from scratch, not adapted from an existing
SPICE. Bob said that effort for that would be high. Mike said he had initially thought
the effort would not be high, but he had since reviewed the IBIS-ISS specification
and found that there was quite a bit to it.

Bob said we would want to check that ISS files contained the subcircuits called
by IBIS files.  Mike said that was considered a motive for including the parsing in
ibischk itself, as opposed to having an independent isschk.  Randy noted that ibischk
also did not check Touchstone files for number of ports, etc.  Bob said a parser would
have to reject SPICE content that is not valid IIS.  Mike agreed, noting it might be
easy to accidentally include non-IBIS-ISS syntax in an IBIS-ISS file, and a simulator
such as HSPICE might still accept it.

Randy Wolff moved to adjourn. Lance Wang seconded. Without objection the meeting ended.

Meeting ended: 11:33 ET

Next meeting September 15, 2020