IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 04 Dec 2012

Members (asterisk for those attending):
Agilent:                    * Fangyi Rao
                            * Radek Biernacki
Altera:                     * David Banas
                              Julia Liu
                              Hazlina Ramly
Andrew Joy Consulting:        Andy Joy
ANSYS:                        Samuel Mertens
                            * Dan Dvorscak
                              Curtis Clark
                              Steve Pytel
                            * Luis Armenta
Arrow Electronics:            Ian Dodd
Cadence Design Systems:       Terry Jernberg
                            * Ambrish Varma
                              Feras Al-Hawari
                              Brad Brim
                              Kumar Keshavan
                              Ken Willis
Cavium Networks:              Johann Nittmann
Celsionix:                    Kellee Crisafulli
Cisco Systems:                Ashwin Vasudevan
                              Syed Huq
Ericsson:                     Anders Ekholm
IBM:                          Greg Edlund
Intel:                      * Michael Mirmak
Maxim Integrated Products:    Mahbubul Bari
                              Hassan Rafat
                              Ron Olisar
Mentor Graphics:              John Angulo
                              Zhen Mu
                            * Arpad Muranyi
                              Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Micron Technology:            Randy Wolff
                              Justin Butterfield
NetLogic Microsystems:        Ryan Couts
Nokia-Siemens Networks:       Eckhard Lenski
QLogic Corp.                  James Zhou
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
                              Ray Anderson

The meeting was led by Arpad Muranyi

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Opens:

- Arpad: We will have 3 meetings in December

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Call for patent disclosure:

- None

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Review of ARs:

- Walter update BIRD 150 with comments received
  - Done

- Mike post Walter's updated BIRD 150 on the ATM website
  - Done

- Fangyi, Mahbubul, et. al., to discuss merging their "Redriver" proposal with BIRD 131.
  - In progress

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New Discussion:

Interconnect report:
- Michael Mirmak recapped recent progress

BIRD 150:
- Walter showed BIRD150.1_draft6
- Walter explained the operation of Out_Match
- Arpad: "Columns Types" needs to be fixed
  - Also "parameters" is misspelled in the next paragraph.
- David: Is "the values of the dependent values" redundant?
- Walter changed to "values of the dependent parameters"
- Ambrish: This is to avoid large AMI files with all possible parameter settings?
- Walter: A Range parameter for example has infinite values

- Walter explained the operation of Out_Closest
  - This involves upper and lower bounds

Walter's audio connection was lost

Retimer:
- Fangyi: Walter's question about retimers working with backchannel is valid
  - The backchannel could bypass mid-channel devices
  - Or we could have a more sophisticated setup with the mid-channel handling it

Walter resumed BIRD 150:
- Walter: Out_PWL can not be used for String or Boolean
- Radek: It may be that not all software will choose Closest the same
  - They may round differently
- Walter added a sentence to warn about this.
- Walter: This is a universal problem, not easily avoided.
- Fangyi: This can't go diagonal, it has to be X and Y
- Walter: Correct
- Fangyi: Is the dependency table input to AMI_Init()?
- Walter: No, there is a line saying that, not sure where
- Ambrish: On page 5 is there one example or two?
- Walter went over the examples
  - One lacks a label

- Bob: What happens when a value outside the range is selected?
- Walter: The nearest is chosen

- Fangyi: In the last meeting we had a naming issue
- Walter: There are now called "Simulation Reserved Parameters"
- Ambrish: It should be clear that they are only for dependency tables
- Fangyi: "may not be" should be "can not be" in the restrictions
- Walter made that change.
- Fangyi: The dependent parameters can not be model specific?
- Walter: There is no need for that restriction

- Arpad: What is the Type of parameters only used by a table?
- Walter: It should be Info
- Walter added a sentence require Usage Info
- Mike: We could say that doesn't matter, or disallow it
- Ambrish: Info is information for the user or EDA tool
- Arpad: If a parameter is never seen by the user it is not Info
- Walter: We may be wordsmithing too much ahead of voting
- Ambrish: We may not need the last column

- Ambrish: Fangyi's retimer proposal will be on the agenda next week

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Next meeting: 11 Dec 2012 12:00pm PT

Next agenda:
1) Task list item discussions

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IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:

1) Simulator directives