Todd, Your explanation is excellent, couldn't have done it any better. Thanks, Arpad ======================================= -----Original Message----- From: owner-ibis@server.eda.org [mailto:owner-ibis@server.eda.org] On Behalf Of Todd Westerhoff Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 7:16 AM To: 'Dimitry Eisenshtat' Cc: ibis@server.eda-stds.org; ibis-users@server.eda.org Subject: RE: [IBIS-Users] RE: [IBIS] Ibis open drain strange behaviour Sorry for the delay in reply - I took the weekend off ;-) As far as non-time correlation between IBIS and transistor models goes - no, it isn't a problem at all. It's just important that people understand what a model represents and what it doesn't, so that they can draw the right conclusions from their simulations. I was just re-iterating one of my favorite points with "time 0 in an IBIS model is arbitrary". To your point, it's worth noting that time 0 in a spice model-based simulation is often arbitrary as well. A spice model represents only the output buffer at most, so if you're analyzing a device with a clock-to-out timing specification, you still need to figure out how to combine the delays measured in simulation with the timing spec for the device. I think people often ascribe too much credibility to spice models. The model you receive is a function of how the netlist and parasitics for the buffer were extracted - it's far too easy to become confused about what part of the overall device the spice model represents. As to page 70 of the IBIS cookbook - I agree with what it says. That particular page is assuming a DDR device, so that a 100 MHz clock yields 200M transfers/sec, each with a 5 ns UI. Let's suppose you have a model with a 6ns rising V-T curve for this case. The simulator will trigger the curve, begin sweeping the output, and then get retriggered at the 5ns point - before the rising edge is complete. What should the simulator do? - should it just jump to the start of the falling curve (if it does, you may get a discontinuity on the output that can either glitch the output or cause a convergence problem) - should the simulator "pipeline" the waveform results, and just remember the next edge starts 1 ns later - and if the input edges keep coming faster than the curve length, how long should the simulator keep this up before it starts clipping data? ... my earlier point was that the IBIS spec has no guidance on how a simulator should handle "overclocking" and different simulators DO handle this issue different ways. That being the case, it's best to avoid the problem by complying with the strong recommendation on page 70. As far as curve trimming goes, allow me to provide a *brief* overview, although I'm sure this subject has been discussed previously. Pointers into the archive for this subject from others would be appreciated. Let's consider a push-pull output stage instead of open drain - open-drain will just be a simpler case. Each output should have the following V-T curves [Corners] x [Edge] x [Loading] [Min / Typ / Max] x [Rising / Falling] x [50 ohms GND / 50 ohms VDDQ] ... for a total of 12 sets of V-T curves. ... for each [Corner]/[Loading] combination, it is ESSENTIAL that if you trim dead time off one curve, you trim the SAME amount of dead time off the other. As an example, if you trim 1ns off the start of the [Min]/[Rising]/[50 ohms GND] curve, you MUST trim 1ns off the [Min]/[Rising]/[50 ohms VDDQ] curve. If the second curve was already rising at that point, well, you need to trim less. This is what's called "time correlation" between curves, and it must be maintained. ... good practice dictates that you coordinate your trimming across all four of the V-T waveforms for any corner. If you don't do this, you'll introduce duty cycle distortion into the simulated waveform without meaning to. I believe this is now considered to be required practice. So, if you trim 1ns off the start of the [Min]/[Rising]/[50 ohms GND] curve, you really, really should trim 1ns off the following curves: [Min]/[Rising]/[50 ohms VDDQ] [Min]/[Falling]/[50 ohms GND] [Min]/[Falling]/[50 ohms VDDQ] ... so that time correlation is maintained across all the [Min] curves. As before, if you go to trim any of the curves and find the transition was already starting, you need to trim less. I don't believe IBIS requires that you coordinate trimming across corners. Thus, you can trim different amounts from the [Min] and [Typ] curve sets. In practice, you'll find this is useful because if you try to coordinate trimming across a 3 corners, the amount you are able to trim may be sharply limited. It's important to understand, though, that if you trim different amounts from the different corners, the time correlation between the corners will be lost. Strictly speaking, that's not a problem, as time 0 in an IBIS simulation is arbitrary. HOWEVER - if users of the model simulate the [Min] and [Typ] cases and overlay the results, they will draw incorrect conclusions if they assume the curves are time-correlated. It probably goes without saying, but - you can trim any amount of dead time you want off the END of a curve once the slope is zero. Good practice says the last two points should form a line with zero slope, so that any extrapolation the simulator performs does what you expect. As in all modeling - knowing what you've got is the first step in understanding what conclusions you can draw. Arpad & others - please correct me if I've gotten any of this wrong ... Todd. Todd Westerhoff VP, Software Products SiSoft 6 Clock Tower Place, Suite 250 Maynard, MA 01754 (978) 461-0449 x24 twesterh@sisoft.com www.sisoft.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-ibis-users@eda.org [mailto:owner-ibis-users@eda.org] On Behalf Of Dimitry Eisenshtat Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 3:58 AM To: Todd Westerhoff Cc: ibis@eda-stds.org; ibis-users@eda.org Subject: Re: [IBIS-Users] RE: [IBIS] Ibis open drain strange behaviour Todd, ok, we understand that time correlation between IBIS and HSpice is not guaranteed, but is it really problem? I mean, in the most often situation there is no place for such comparison at all, because you have only IBIS model, no spice netlist is available. This is the first reason for making IBIS (if simulator speed is not an issue), is it right? Lets say, I'm with semiconductor vendor side, I have the netlist of the buffer, I make the IBIS model based on spice simulations, not lab measurements, so on final step when the model is ready I like to check it vs. original spice behavioral. This is the only situation I agree the comparison is important. But in such case there is no REAL problem - I know exactly about the delay, and if it is the only difference between the IBIS & spice - I don't care. I want ask you about IBIS simulator aspect of the point we are talking about. Look, I find in "Cookbook for ver4" strongly recommendation to trim IBIS model time tables at least to half of max buffer frequency period. (http://www.vhdl.org/pub/ibis/cookbook/cookbook-v4.pdf page 70, 5.4.2 V-T Table Windowing). Can you please prefer from simulator software side - is it really problem for the simulator if the time table window is more then such time interval? And one additional point, you wrote "There are specific restrictions on how the dead time may be trimmed, which is a longer discussion" - right now I writes perl script which will trim tables in order to leave only transition region and decrease the time window as the Cookbook recommends to do. So, can you please explain about these restrictions? Thanks, Dmitry ... (previous thread clipped) -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -------------------------------------------------------------------- |For help or to subscribe/unsubscribe, e-mail majordomo@eda-stds.org |with the appropriate command message(s) in the body: | | help | subscribe ibis <optional e-mail address, if different> | subscribe ibis-users <optional e-mail address, if different> | unsubscribe ibis <optional e-mail address, if different> | unsubscribe ibis-users <optional e-mail address, if different> | |or e-mail a request to ibis-request@eda-stds.org. | |IBIS reflector archives exist under: | | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/email_archive/ Recent | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/users_archive/ Recent | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/email/ E-mail since 1993 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. -------------------------------------------------------------------- |For help or to subscribe/unsubscribe, e-mail majordomo@eda-stds.org |with the appropriate command message(s) in the body: | | help | subscribe ibis <optional e-mail address, if different> | subscribe ibis-users <optional e-mail address, if different> | unsubscribe ibis <optional e-mail address, if different> | unsubscribe ibis-users <optional e-mail address, if different> | |or e-mail a request to ibis-request@eda-stds.org. | |IBIS reflector archives exist under: | | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/email_archive/ Recent | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/users_archive/ Recent | http://www.eda-stds.org/pub/ibis/email/ E-mail since 1993Received on Mon Jan 15 08:24:17 2007
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