IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 15 Apr 2008

Members (asterisk for those attending):
  Ambrish Varma, Cadence Design Systems
* Anders Ekholm, Ericsson
* Arpad Muranyi, Mentor Graphics Corp.
  Barry Katz, SiSoft
* Bob Ross, Teraspeed Consulting Group
  Brad Griffin, Cadence Design Systems
  David Banas, Xilinx
  Donald Telian, consultant
* Doug White, Cisco Systems
  Essaid Bensoudane, ST Microelectronics
  Ganesh Narayanaswamy, ST Micro
  G*** Guan, Sigrity
  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
  Sam Chitwood, Sigrity
  Sanjeev Gupta, Agilent
  Shangli Wu, Cadence
* Sid Singh, Extreme Networks
  Stephen Scearce, Cisco Systems
  Steve Pytel, Ansoft
  Syed Huq, Cisco Systems
  Syed Sadeghi, ST Micro
* Terry Jernberg, Cadence Design Systems
  Todd Westerhoff, SiSoft
  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:

- Arpad will be travelling, unable to host next week.
  - John Angulo will host.

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Review of ARs:

- Walter update BIRD 107 based on feedback, coordinate with EDA vendors
  - Done

- David Banas report Xilinx position on LTI assumption for SerDes
  - No update

- 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:

Arpad showed Walter's BIRD 107 update document
- Blue markup shows the items added.
- Terminology cleaned up in places to not be unnecessarily specific:
  - Kumar recommended these changes.
  - Step 4 on pg 17 uses less specific terminology
    - Do not specify "filter" for example.
  - 2.1.6 uses the word "filtered", but that is OK here.
- Radek: Not sure if "for example by convolution" is needed on pg 17.
  - Arpad: Without the example "combines" may not be clear
  - Walter: The word "combine" is generic enough.
- Walter: Do we vote on this?
  - Arpad: A consensus will suffice.
- Walter: It needs to be written in plain text like BIRD 107.1
  - Bob: This document is useful, and should be on the ATM site.
  - Bob: keep text to 78 character or less line lengths
- Walter will send .doc, .pdf, and .txt today
  - This will be introduced in next IBIS Open Forum meeting.

AR: Walter send "final" BIRD 107 documents

Arpad showed Walter's Electronic Model Description presentation
- Is the list of circuit elements on page 17 complete?
  - Add K element
  - Add controlled sources
- Can we call the Berkeley SPICE with additions?
- Michael M: this a non-transistor level language
- Bob: are elements like resistors single or matrix?
  - Walter: single
- Arpad: capacitors and resistors can be made with transistors, but
  we will not go there
- Walter: tools will parse this and convert to proprietary format
- Michael M: this conveys only values, not engine-specific information
  - There is no time step control, for example
- Michael M: We should declare which domains are supported: time, freq
- Mike L: this is similar to the IBIS macro language we proposed
  - Arpad: One difference between this and the macro language is S parameter
  - Walter: this will not run directly in any tool
- Arpad: how do we coordinate tool interpretations of the language
  - Walter: show example inputs and corresponding outputs
  - S parameter usage is subject to interpretation
  - Arpad: VHDL-AMS is well defined
    - If this is loosely defined there will be problems
- Walter: how to proceed?
  - We all agree that some kind of netlist is needed
  - Tasks:
    - 1) define IBIS-SPICE meta language elements
    - 2) define how to represent netlist for module
    - 3) given a circuit, how to define the associated model
    - 4) coupled models (this is hard)
- Arpad: We may be diving into details too soon
  - In the past IBIS called the package by reference
  - This is turned around
  - The EMD system is top level, it calls the other objects
- We can discuss system structure next week
- Bob: These could be nested
  - Walter: If 2 EMDs are connected, which is at top level?

- Anders: will EMD enable package modeling?
  - Walter: Yes
  - The presentation is on the ibis-atm web site

Next meeting: 22 April 2007 12:00pm PT

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