IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 06 January 2015

Members (asterisk for those attending):
Altera:                     * David Banas
ANSYS:                      * Dan Dvorscak
                            * Curtis Clark
Avago (LSI)                   Xingdong Dai
Cadence Design Systems:     * Ambrish Varma
                              Brad Brim
                              Kumar Keshavan
                              Ken Willis
Ericsson:                     Anders Ekholm
IBM                           Steve Parker
Intel:                      * Michael Mirmak
Keysight Technologies:        Fangyi Rao
                            * Radek Biernacki
Maxim Integrated Products:    Hassan Rafat
Mentor Graphics:              John Angulo
                            * Arpad Muranyi
Micron Technology:          * Randy Wolff
                              Justin Butterfield
QLogic Corp.                  James Zhou
                              Andy Joy
eASIC                         Marc Kowalski
SiSoft:                     * Walter Katz
                            * Todd Westerhoff
                            * Mike LaBonte
Synopsys                      Rita Horner
Teraspeed Consulting Group:   Scott McMorrow
Teraspeed Labs:             * Bob Ross

(Note: Agilent has changed to Keysight)

The meeting was led by Arpad Muranyi.

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Opens:

- Arpad: We will meet Jan 13 & 20, not 27.


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Call for patent disclosure:

- None


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Review of ARs:

- Todd produce slides for co-optimization requirements.
  - Update today.

- Arpad to review IBIS spec for min max issues.
  - In progress.


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New Discussion:

Co-optimization:

- Arpad: What does probing requirement 10 mean?
- Todd: Optimization by proxy gives an example where probing is not supported.
- Mike described each requirement on slide 5.
- Arpad: The order of optimization among Rx blocks can make a difference.
  - It may matter if the DFE is first or the CTLE.
- Todd: We only provide messaging.
  - The models are a black box.
- Michael M: Are there protocols that handle this?
  - We give give an option to override.
- Mike showed slide 17
- Todd: This says the Rx is in control.
  - It can choose when commands are sent to the Tx.
- Arpad: The Rx may need the raw channel response.
- David: The Tx equalization can be set to zero.
- Ambrish: We might have a way to include only the analog effects of the Tx.
- Todd: Some models rely on Init to do voltage scaling.
- David: We need to stay above implementation arguments here.
- Arpad: The specification has to work for people building real models.
- Mike L: Getting the channel response without TX EQ sounds like a scenario 2 requirement.

- David: Would that support TX with no backchannel capability?
- Todd: Walter had suggested that but we dropped it.
- Arpad: Is this a laundry list of everything we could do?
- Ambrish: David should justify his request.
- Mike showed slide 16.
- Todd: This shows the packaging on the blocks.
  - The Tx Configurator receives commands from the Rx.
- David: This does not show the messages moving through the EDA tool.
- Todd: Some of this can be done with wrappers.
- David: What is scenario 2 referring to?
- Todd: We have the same challenge with models for IP that has no backchannel.
  - We still need to find optimal settings for them.
- Ambrish: I still need to understand David's request.
- David: Scenario 1 matches hardware exactly
  - Scenario 2 finds optimal settings, something we need to do with any SerDes.

- Radek: I had asked about the tool carrying out the optimization.
- Walter: Nothing here prohibits a tool from optimizing.
  - It would have to know how to send incremental changes.
- Todd: David is requesting to use legacy Tx models in optimization.
  - Do we need a scenario 3 to optimize in the simulator?
- Walter: We would need dependency tables to avoid recompiling.
- David: At a high level I need legacy Txs to work with co-optimization.
- Ambrish: What is the justification?
- David: I want my models to work with tools that have a co-optimization flow.
- Arpad: First-time AMI model makers might run into this too.

- Todd: We seem to have 3 requested additions:
  - Allowing functional blocks within models to participate in co-optimization in the right order.
  - Letting the EDA tool run co-optimization.
  - Using legacy Tx models in co-optimization.

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Next meeting: 13 Jan 2015 12:00pm PT
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IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:

1) Simulator directives