IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 08 Jan 2008

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
* Mustansir Fanaswalla, Xilinx
  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:

- ATM API marketing (Don Telian)
- New toolkit/interoperability (Todd W.)
  - There was a bug in the combined toolsets regarding a bad memory pointer
  - Cadence addressed this but SiSoft's program made assumptions about
    non-null returned information.
  - Both companies are updating their kits.
  - Three things needed:
    - New SiSoft toolkit
    - New Cadence toolkit
    - A cookbook
  - The latter will be published independently.
  - No data from Cadence on when the update would be released.

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Review of ARs:

- AMI BIRD authors meet to prove AMI BIRD can handle Mellitz cases
  - Todd reported that he and SiSoft are debating about how to disclose
    handling the linearity issues described in 2007 by Rich Mellitz.

- Mike S send non-proprietary information on studies he performed
  - ???

- EDA vendors: meet to decide differential BIRD direction
  - ???

- Michael M. sketch new IBIS interconnect plan
  - ???

- Walter coordinate completion of true diff BIRD draft
  - ???

- 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

-------------
New Discussion:

- Don: do we need an ATM-oriented support website to provide marketing push?
  - Don represents a company that would like to add its logo and make an
    announcement specific to the ATM API.
  - Bob: can the company simply join the IBIS Open Forum? 
- Should we have a press release?
  - MM: GEIA supportive.
  - Don mentioned that the public still views IBIS as "something less than
    HSPICE."
    - He also mentioned that this should be trumpeted a bit.
    - Don's suggested next step: link to Matlab?
- Bob asked who the company was.
  - Don deferred.
  - Bob and Michael reminded the team that communications need to be open
    and public.
  - Ian cautioned being careful about communications regarding specific
    companies.

- Todd: Changes online will take some time.
  - We should get ATM out of macromodel_wip.
  - Need easy-to-access link.

- Ian: where's EBD?
  - Where did the website go?
  - Bob and Arpad noted that the website has been restored and that EBD
    definitions are part of the IBIS specification.

- Bob: We are moving away from [Diff Pin].
- Arpad: Don't mind [Diff Pin] etc. being left in the spec for pseudo-diff
  - But not for true differential single-model-two-pins approach.
  - To clean that up,we would need to introduce 
- Bob: Are we specifying rules of evaluation or behavior?
  - Currently, IBIS does not support true differential except under
    [External Model].
  - Todd: External model supports true differential?

- Walter/Bob: summarized state of current IBIS, measurements vs. behaviors
- Stimulus is also controlled by [Diff Pin]
- Walter: path 1 was to determine all the other measurement functions
  through another set of keywords
- [Diff pin] and [Model Selector] cause issues
  - Skew and other measurements should never have been placed at the pin level
  - Bob: Agree; suggest Vdiff may be lined out
- Walter: Would like to limit one BIRD to measurement rules
  - Having a parallel set of keywords to establish a cleaner structure
    (Bob, Michael) would be separate.
  - Walter: Keeping things clean would be a major problem
  - Arpad: We should avoid having two avenues to achieve the same thing.  

- Todd: behavioral descriptions and evaluation are two different things.
  - Why not separate measurements and models?
  - Bob, Michael and Arpad described how this idea has been proposed in the past.
- Bob: Should we have old and new in the same file?
  - Why this restriction?
  - Doesn't the EDA tool have to have the same functionality?

Next meeting: 15 Jan 2007 12:00pm PT

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