IBIS Macromodel Task Group Meeting date: 10 Jan 2011 Members (asterisk for those attending): Agilent: * Fangyi Rao Radek Biernacki Altera: * David Banas Ansys: Samuel Mertens * Dan Dvorscak * Curtis Clark Arrow Electronics: Ian Dodd Cadence Design Systems: Terry Jernberg * Ambrish Varma * Feras Al-Hawari Celsionix: Kellee Crisafulli Cisco Systems: Ashwin Vasudevan Syed Huq Ericsson: Anders Ekholm IBM: Greg Edlund Intel: Michael Mirmak LSI Logic: Wenyi Jin Maxim Integrated Products: Mahbubul Bari Mentor Graphics: * John Angulo Zhen Mu * Arpad Muranyi Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov Micron Technology: Randy Wolff NetLogic Microsystems: Ryan Couts Nokia-Siemens Networks: * Eckhard Lenski QLogic Corp. * James Zhou Sigrity: Brad Brim Kumar Keshavan Ken Willis SiSoft: * Walter Katz Todd Westerhoff Doug Burns * Mike LaBonte 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: Reminder: we will not meet the week of the DesignCON summit -------------------------- Call for patent disclosure: - None ------------- Review of ARs: - Walter submit updated BIRD 123 to Open Forum - This is 123.2 - This was emailed again today after trouble with the first email - Arpad update analog model overview - Done - Arpad send updated Usage Out Fix BIRD to Mike for posting ------------- New Discussion: Arpad showed the Usage Out BIRD draft: - Arpad: No comments have been received - Bob: There is a new line about Corner not being allowed with Usage Out - Arpad: That was explained previously - Bob: Note 8 should have the Corner restriction added - Arpad: That item is not where it belongs - Bob: It should be somewhere in that synopsis - Arpad added the Corner restriction at item 10 - Ambrish: I did not see a notice that this was posted - What were the changes? - Arpad showed the changes side-by-side - David: What is the reason for the Corner restriction? - Arpad: The Corner selection is made in the EDA tool - It is not appropriate for the model to declare Corner Bob motioned to submit the Usage Out BIRD with changes to the Open Forum - Ambrish seconded - No one objected - The motion was approved AR: Arpad submit Usage Out BIRD with changes to the Open Forum Arpad showed Walter's summary of analog model proposals: - Walter: In the future we want to handle more than 3 corners - It is best to not do this on IBIS with it's fixed 3 columns - The parameter tree format is flexible enough for this purpose - ISS is an LTI language - We need BSS with buffer models - Arpad: This could be used for general purpose IBIS - Walter: That may be true - We also have to interface with package models - Sometimes they are assigned to groups of pins - We need a model connection protocol with parameter passing - In general the pins will have the same model, except for length - Everything in the Model section can go into the tree structure - IBIS 6.0 could be a parameter format IBIS - C_comp could be Corner or Range - Arpad: The tree format is not related to these technical discussions - It could be done easily, on autopilot - The editorial committee could do it - Bob: The editorial committee is overloaded - Feras: The current IBIS syntax can be extended to have more corners - Walter: The C_comp discussions tell us how difficult that has become - Arpad: A user defined section would allow updates any time - Ambrish: It would be necessary to support both formats - Walter: A conversion from old to new would be easy - There would be some choices like whether how to convert C_comp - It would be easier to do the analog BIRD - Ambrish: We need the analog BIRD before IBIS 6.0 - Arpad: What in these BIRDs could not be done easily? - Feras: The current syntax has the interfaces between parts well defined - Bob: I would prefer this be a new standard, not IBIS - We showed an XML version at one point Walter showed an email describing a parameter tree interconnection format: - Arpad: This would delay our progress - We need the analog capabilities soon - Walter: There are new advantages - Portions can be in external files - Feras: The current syntax can point to external files - Not opposed to the new idea, but concerned about time - Ambrish: This might take months to years to reach consensus - Arpad: This would be more machine readable - How ready are tool makers to throw out their existing parsers? - Arpad: The corner limit could be solved using external files - Walter: Many parameters can be tied to process corner - Feras: If it can be solved in one format it can be solved in the other - Walter: BIRDs 118 & 116 will work fine - There should be 3 pre-defined subckts - information could go into them automatically - Feras: With external model we don't need new constructs - Walter: 99% of models use Touchstone - Short cuts to those are needed - Feras: We should not be limited to pre-defined subckts - Arpad: These would not limit anything - Walter: What would be wrong with 3 intrinsic subckts? - Fangyi: It would not be neutral - Walter: It would work in every tool that implements the spec - Arpad: The same Supporting_Files can be used by thousands of models - Feras: [External Model] can do this easily - Ambrish: We could have example circuits - Walter: They have to be reserved so they need not be supplied - Arpad: This would preclude having an external subckt of the same name Meeting ended. ------------- Next meeting: 17 Jan 2011 12:00pm PT Next agenda: 1) Task list item discussions ------------- IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List: 1) Simulator directives