[IBIS-Users] Discussion about the next version of the IBIS specification

From: Muranyi, Arpad <Arpad_Muranyi@mentor.com>
Date: Fri Feb 06 2015 - 10:35:30 PST
Hello Everyone,

We had an interesting discussion in the IBIS Open Forum Teleconference
this morning on the topic of when to release the next IBIS specification.

As I was preparing the slides of my usual IBIS-ATM Task Group Report for
the DesignCon IBIS Summit last week,
http://www.eda.org/ibis/summits/jan15/muranyi.pdf
it kind of "hit me" that we didn't have a new specification release for
over a year.  The current specification, v6.0 was released in September
2013, about a year and a half ago.  Around that time we were also talking
about a more regular release schedule that would be independent of how
many BIRDs were available or how big they were.  (This has some side
effects regarding the costs associated with parser development, and the
related questions on how much we should/can charge for it, but I do not
want to talk about that in this email thread).

Looking at the list of approved BIRDs on slide 3 in the presentation
mentioned above I wonder if it would make sense to draw the line at
where we are with the currently approved BIRDs and release a new IBIS
specification right away.

One of our goals in the ATM and Interconnect Task Groups was to include
the badly needed new package modeling capabilities in the "next" IBIS
version and (even though less emphasized) also the Back Channel BIRD.
These are two major pieces of proposals we are still working on.  And
this is exactly why I am raising this question, because these are big
topics and they are still being worked on.

Many of the BIRDs which are currently approved are minor corrections
or clarifications, but there are a few important technical ones among
them too.  Considering the amount of time we still need to complete
the Package/Interconnect and Back Channel BIRDs I am leaning towards 
releasing a new specification now, in the spring of 2015, with the
approved BIRDs and plan for a more major release perhaps for the fall
of 2015 with the upcoming "big feature changes".

Obviously we didn't make a decision on these question in the Open Forum
meeting today, but we made a motion to put this topic on the agenda for
the next meeting (three weeks from today, on Feb/27/2015) with a goal
to make a decision whether we should release a specification with the
existing BIRDs now or wait until the two major topics get completed.

I am writing this email to alert everyone to this discussion topic
scheduled for the next meeting, so people who would like to express
their opinion on this question would have a chance to do so.  We can
also use this email thread to "get ready" for that meeting and discuss
the pros and cons beforehand.  I have a few thoughts on that too, but
I will wait with that until the discussion begins to roll.

Your comments, suggestions and questions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Arpad
=========================================================================

-- 
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 mikelabonte@eda-stds.org
|or ibis-request@eda-stds.org
|
|IBIS reflector archives exist under:
|
|  http://www.eda-stds.org/ibis/email_archive/ Recent
|  http://www.eda-stds.org/ibis/users_archive/ Recent
|  http://www.eda-stds.org/ibis/email/         E-mail since 1993
Received on Fri Feb 6 10:36:44 2015

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Fri Feb 06 2015 - 10:37:01 PST