IBIS Macromodel Task Group Meeting date: 17 Apr 2012 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 A 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: - Michael M.: Need to ask question about code passed parameters - Also some questions about units - Five questions -------------------------- Call for patent disclosure: - None ------------- Review of ARs: - Arpad send notification of upcoming vote to the reflector. - Done - There may be questions about what we are voting on - Walter/Bob prepare CTLE parameter string example - Done - There are other related requests - Arpad to propose IBIS spec changes to clarify ISS D2A & A2D interfaces - Found a good location in the spec for this - Arpad to write a new revision of BIRD 117 and 118 to generalize references to parameters in files (.ami or any) - Done - Ambrish update BIRD 145 for pad to pin mapping and other clarifications - Tabled, waiting for outcome of other issues ------------- New Discussion: Questions from Michael M.: - Units for sample int, bit time, clock times: - Michael: It is not stated that units are seconds - Walter: Numbers are floating point, the units are seconds - James: We should document this in the new spec - Michael: It will be in 5.1, a BIRD may be needed - David: We could simply state that all units are MKS unless otherwise stated - Bob: The editorial group can handle this - Radek: Are unit suffixes accepted? - Michael & Arpad: No - For Gaussian, Dual-Dirac, and DjRj types Float and UI are both permitted: - Michael: Can be fractional UI, can be seconds, could be tricky - Walter: This is cleared up in BIRD 123 - I added "seconds or UI" to all params in BIRD 123 - This should be done for the jitter parameters - Every Reserved_Par of type Float should say if it is in seconds? - Michael: Do we need Type Time to use instead of Float? - Walter: Model makers only need to specify on docs what the data type is - Bob: We don't want a specific type - Michael: Would a tool interpret a number a fraction of a UI if type not given? - Radek: It should be seconds unless type is given as UI - Walter: For time params Float is always seconds and UI is always UI - James: How is UI passed to the DLL? - Walter: It is an AMI_Init() float argument in seconds, bit_time - Michael: Rx_Receiver_Sensitivity can't be UI so it is always Float BIRD 144.3: - Arpad: Walter motioned to recommend rejection to the Open Forum - Walter: A No vote means untabling and having a vote - Bob: We should just return it to the Open Forum without recommendation - Arpad: We are tasked with making a recommendation - Bob: An s2p, s4p, or s7p could be configured using [External Circuit] - Walter: The current BIRD 144 needs much work for termination issues - IBM is OK with BIRD 116 - Arpad: Voting a BIRD down is not the end, anyone can write a new BIRD - We have many other BIRDs that need our attention - We should make a recommendation on 144 though - Radek: There is no deadline, we can keep it tabled - We need to avoid endless discussion of it though - Arpad: It can be opened as a new BIRD anyway - Mike L: We could have three votes for this - Whether to return to Open Forum, whether to recommend, what to recommend - Ambrish: We do not have to make a recommendation - Walter: We should find out how much support it has - Arpad: We should try voting - Mike motioned to return BIRD 144.3 to Open Forum - Radek: Without recommendation? - Mike withdrew his motion - Radek motioned to table BIRD 144.3 for discussion - Walter seconded - Arpad: A yes vote is to table, no to keep discussion or abstain - Roll call vote: Agilent: Y Altera: Y Ansys: Y Cadence Design Systems: Y Intel: A Mentor Graphics: Y Nokia-Siemens Networks: Y QLogic: Y SiSoft: Y Teraspeed: Y - The motion passed with 9 yes, 0 no, 1 abstain - Bob motioned to table BIRD 145.2 for discussion - Walter seconded - No one objected - The vote passed by acclamation - Bob: Three authors of the multi-lingual proposal are here today BIRD 117.4/118/3 draft 2: - Arpad showed a list of changes - Arpad: Full parameter tree paths are used to avoid ambiguity - Might still need to resolve reserved vs. model_specific - Arpad showed BIRD 117.4 draft 2 - Arpad: Converter_Parameters is added - The separator parameter between tree levels is a period - File names are part of it - Radek: Can files be in a subdirectory? - Arpad: We have no language yet to allow paths - We would have to deal with separator characters and line length problems - Walter: It not not be a full path, it would be relative - BIRD 121 describes it this way - Arpad: EDA tools may offer ways for users to make specific value selections - The actual tree data is bracketed by IBIS keywords - Walter: Parentheses would be better than periods - Bob would like to table this - He could make a recommendation for next week - Bob: This is changing the rules for parameters - We used to have the parameters on one line - Walter: We should table this until an alternative is suggested - Bob: The complexity is excessive - The rules are impossible to check - Ambrish: Why impossible? - Bob: Each Converter_Parameters must be on a separate line - On D_to_A there can be variable numbers of arguments - Arpad: The rules are spelled out - Bob: We can't build a parser against this - It is hard to know if each item is a number or a parameter - The 120 character limit becomes a problem - Walter: That limit can be increased - This is not a very complex syntax - This should be tabled for now - Arpad: This is the first introduction of this change, tabling would be premature - James: The logic needs to be more clear - Radek: We might not want the file name before the parameters if it is "this file" - Bob: Parameters should be in a separate file - Radek: We might not want to allow referencing other IBIS files - Walter: EBD has a file mapping section - Arpad: Please send any suggested changes to this by email before next week ------------- Next meeting: 24 Apr 2012 12:00pm PT Next agenda: 1) Task list item discussions ------------- IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List: 1) Simulator directives