IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 18 Dec 2007

Members (asterisk for those attending):
  Ambrish Varma, Cadence Design Systems
* Arpad Muranyi, Mentor Graphics Corp.
  Barry Katz, SiSoft
* Bob Ross, Teraspeed Consulting Group
  David Banas, Xilinx
  Donald Telian, consultant
  Doug White, Cisco Systems
  Essaid Bensoudane, ST Microelectronics
  Ganesh Narayanaswamy, ST Micro
  Hemant Shah, Cadence Design Systems
* Ian Dodd
  Joe Abler, IBM
* John Angulo, Mentor Graphics
  John Shields, Mentor Graphics
  Ken Willis, Cadence Design Systems
* Kumar, Cadence Design Systems
  Lance Wang, Cadence Design Systems
  Luis Boluna, Cisco
  Michael Mirmak, Intel Corp.
* Mike LaBonte, Cisco Systems
  Mike Steinberger, SiSoft
  Patrick O'Halloran, Tiburon Design Automation
  Paul Fernando, NCSU
* Radek Biernacki, Agilent (EESof)
* Randy Wolff, Micron Technology
  Ray Comeau, Cadence Design Systems
  Richard Mellitz, Intel
  Richard Ward, Texas Instruments
  Sanjeev Gupta, Agilent
  Shangli Wu, Cadence
  Stephen Scearce, Cisco Systems
  Steve Pytel, Ansoft
  Syed Huq, Cisco Systems
  Syed Sadeghi, ST Micro
* Todd Westerhoff, SiSoft
  Terry Jernberg, Cadence Design Systems
  Vikas Gupta, Xilinx
  Vuk Borich, Agilent
* Walter Katz, SiSoft

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Call for patent disclosure:

- No one declared a patent.

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Opens:

- We agreed the next meeting would be 8 Jan 2008.

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Review of ARs:

- AMI BIRD authors meet to prove AMI BIRD can handle Mellitz cases
  - TBD
  - We may discuss this Jan 8.

- Mike S send non-proprietary information on studies he performed
  - TBD
  - This was discussed, with no conclusion yet.

- EDA vendors: meet to decide differential BIRD direction
  - TBD, but we can talk about it now
  - The choice is between making small changes to existing keywords,
    versus bigger changes that are more elegant.
  - Arpad & John: Mentor would prefer to do it the "clean" way.
    - Does not like hanging diff info on single-ended [Model]
  - Walter: Prefer clean restructuring to incremental.
  - Todd: Could have new syntax only for IBIS 5.0
    - Tools would have to still support files <= 4.2
    - Walter: IBIS 5.0 files should not have old content at all.
      - Can have [Diff Pin] or [Diff Pin Model], but not both.
      - Radek: support this
  - Bob: issues:
    - Deprecation of existing keywords
    - Not clear what true differential is under IBIS
      - Walter: disagree; depends on degree of cross current
    - No differential C_comp
      - Arpad: can put capacitance between [Series Pins]
    - Would cause confusion in the industry
  - Arpad: We have talked about "makeovers" several times.
    - When would we expect to see this?
  - Walter: Which EDA companies write IBIS tools?
    - Agilent, Cadence, Mentor, SiSoft, Synopsys
    - ApSim and a few others
  - Radek: Personally, it should be easy to write to a new standard.
  - Todd: This will take until 2009
    - We will need the diff enhancements before that
  - Walter: EDA vendors will probably agree to support both old and new
    - Just can't be in the same file (no [Diff Pin] in new files).
  - Bob: tools will support both ways for at least 5 years
  - Arpad: We should continue working on the BIRD anyway
    - Walter: disagree, we have to decide on direction first
  - Kumar: it depends on how many new items we have to add
    - For example, eye mask can be independent of diff models
    - Adding to existing keywords is easier to implement
    - Not taking a strong position
    - Model developers may have more to say on this

- Michael M. sketch new IBIS interconnect plan
  - Will contact people offline.

- Walter coordinate completion of true diff BIRD draft
  - In progress

- Michael M. draft Eye keywords for true diff BIRD
  - TBD

- Randy draft derating keywords for true diff BIRD
  - TBD

- Arpad:  Write parameter passing syntax proposal (BIRD draft)
  for *-AMS models in IBIS that is consistent with the
  parameter passing syntax of the AMI models
  - TBD

- TBD:    Propose a parameter passing syntax for the SPICE
  - [External ...] also?
  - TBD

- Arpad:  Review the documentation (annotation) in the macro libraries.
  - Deferred until a demand arises or we have nothing else to do

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New Discussion:

- Kumar proposed new IBIS extensions beyond component pin modeling:
- Almost all designs are based on standards
- IBIS is the appropriate place to design for bus types, like PCIX, SATA, etc
- Can we extend to include higher level objects?
  - For example, a named bus
- Arpad: Doesn't [Pin Mapping] help?
- Walter: There should be a separate committee for silicon internals
- Todd: IBIS is currently a component level spec
  - Taking it to interface level is interesting

Next meeting: 08 Jan 2007 12:00pm PT