IBIS Macromodel Task Group Meeting date: 22 March 2011 Members (asterisk for those attending): Agilent: * Fangyi Rao * Radek Biernacki Ansoft: Chris Herrick Danil Kirsanov Ansys: Samuel Mertens * Dan Dvorscak Deepak Ramaswamy Jianhua Gu Cadence Design Systems: Terry Jernberg * Ambrish Varma Celsionix: Kellee Crisafulli Cisco Systems: * Mike LaBonte Stephen Scearce * Ashwin Vasudevan Ericsson: Anders Ekholm IBM: Greg Edlund Intel: Michael Mirmak LSI Logic: Wenyi Jin Mentor Graphics: * John Angulo Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov Zhen Mu * Arpad Muranyi Micron Technology: Randy Wolff Nokia-Siemens Networks: Eckhard Lenski Sigrity: Brad Brim Kumar Keshavan * Ken Willis SiSoft: * Walter Katz Mike Steinberger Todd Westerhoff Snowbush IP: Marcus Van Ierssel ST Micro: Syed Sadeghi Teraspeed Consulting Group: Scott McMorrow * Bob Ross TI: Casey Morrison Alfred Chong Vitesse Semiconductor: Eric Sweetman Xilinx: Mustansir Fanaswalla The meeting was lead by Arpad Muranyi ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Opens: - Arpad mentioned recent agenda additions - Bob asked to talked about the parser - Mike said he would be unable to attend and take minutes Mar 29 -------------------------- Call for patent disclosure: - None ------------- Review of ARs: - Radek start email thread about Crosstalk BIRD issues - Done - Radek: We need time to read it before discussing - There is a modification at the bottom that needs to be pasted in - Arpad submit BIRD 120 with new changes to the Open Forum - Added sentence about GetWave block size - Done - Ambrish draft update BIRD for Table syntax - Done - Bob check BIRD 127 for type clarification possibilities - Done - Ambrish start a BIRD on task list row 25 - In progress - Ken draft BIRD for multiple channels Done - Bob write a BIRD on correcting Table 1-3 in the spec. (Row 23). - In progress ------------- New Discussion: Arpad quickly reviewed the list of items to talk about Arpad showed Ambrish's Table Format clarification BIRD - Arpad: We should be able to decide on submitting this - One comment was about needing an example - An example from the analysis section could be used - Ambrish: Would rather have that in the main text of the spec - Arpad: We usually do have examples with each keyword - Ambrish: This introduces thing not yet covered in the spec - Arpad: We might find another place for it further down - Bob: This section describes AMI file syntax, not DLL syntax - Arpad: This has the problem of having row names only for multiple rows - It also has a named list with no Table keyword - Ambrish: This BIRD introduces only one new rule - Bob: Do we need multi-row tables sent to the DLL? - Ambrish: No - Bob: We could hard code the number of columns - Ambrish: One person creates the AMI and DLL - Bob: The EDA tool sends the data to the DLL - Radek: A number might be interpreted as a name - There could be something to say if rows have names - Or we could decide that one row tables have no names - Ambrish: That would break some models - Arpad: Would it break models if it is for new IBIS rev only? - Then we could have row names for all tables, including 1 row - Bob: We would have to accept that existing models are broken - Tools will look for new models - Scott: The parser has to know what to look for - Arpad: I still need to know if old models will break - Bob: It would be up to tools to parse based on the version - Ken: What if RX and TX use different versions? - Radek: That has to be accommodated - Arpad: This applies to AMI parsing - The DLL can't depend on the version - Radek: Tools will have to remember the AMI version for each DLL - Once we have a new version we have to do this - Walter: Do not allow Table to be Input - Pass the table data as a strings with parentheses - Few models will be broken - Ken: Working models should be accepted as is - Arpad: The syntax of those models are non-compliant - They are not a great concern - We need a good syntax for 5.1 forward - Walter: SiSoft has changed many models to solve problems - Arpad: If tables can't be Input, they still could be Info - Walter: Table rows can have any arbitrary ID - Ambrish: The 5.0 spec does not mandate that the first table item is a number - Walter: It is the ID - Bob: The spec does not say it can be anything but a number - The example is not clear - It is called row number and it starts with -50 - Arpad: We need to define Table syntax now - Walter: The recommendation last year was to use Table only for jitter - Arpad: Should we have a new keyword and let Table die? - Ambrish: Is multi-row input required? - Walter: Strings with parentheses can do it - Ambrish: Tables would be better if well defined - Bob: Using strings changes the type - There are better ways to fix this - Adding one rule allows us to use the existing syntax - For multi-row tables the DLL must hard code the number of columns - No change for single row tables - We also have to decide if labels are sent to the DLL - Arpad: We need to fix the spec which doesn't spell out the syntax - Ambrish: The AMI file makers will decide how they want it - We could say every row has a name - Arpad: If this is Info how does the tool know the meaning of the label - Ambrish: If it's one row the DLL knows that - Radek: It should be consistent - Walter: Having one tree parse is elegant - HSPICE is complex because it has lots of parsers - This is where we are headed - Arpad: Do we agree to fix the existing syntax? - Or will we create a new syntax? - Ambrish: We should fix it - Mike, Walter and Bob agreed - Bob: It has to be well defined - We decided to fix the existing syntax - Arpad: Should we try to be backward compatible - Ken: We should be backward compatible - Mike: We should prefer clarity over compatibility - Bob: Current usages are only implied - Walter: We can't force tools to support models made from bad interpretations - We need a well defined spec - Ken: Can we vote on direction next week? - Arpad: We can discuss this beginning with a forwarded email Ken: Was there any feedback on crosstalk? - Arpad: The email came out just recently - Radek: It can be forwarded again ------------- Next meeting: 29 Mar 2011 12:00pm PT Next agenda: 1) Task list item discussions ------------- IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List: 1) Simulator directives