                                             
IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 19 Jul 2011

Members (asterisk for those attending):
Agilent:                    * Fangyi Rao
                            * Radek Biernacki
Ansys:                        Samuel Mertens
                            * Dan Dvorscak
                              Curtis Clark
Arrow Electronics:            Ian Dodd
Cadence Design Systems:       Terry Jernberg
                            * Ambrish Varma
Celsionix:                    Kellee Crisafulli
Cisco Systems:              * Mike LaBonte
                              Ashwin Vasudevan
			      Syed Huq
Ericsson:                     Anders Ekholm
IBM:                        * Greg Edlund
Intel:                        Michael Mirmak
LSI Logic:                    Wenyi Jin
Mentor Graphics:            * John Angulo
                              Zhen Mu
                            * Arpad Muranyi
Micron Technology:          * Randy Wolff
NetLogic Microsystems:        Ryan Couts
Nokia-Siemens Networks:     * Eckhard Lenski
Sigrity:                      Brad Brim
                              Kumar Keshavan
                            * Ken Willis
SiSoft:                       Walter Katz
                              Todd Westerhoff
			      Doug Burns
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:

- None

--------------------------
Call for patent disclosure:

- None

-------------
Review of ARs:

- Marcus, Ken and Walter update Backchannel BIRD draft
  - Done

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New Discussion:

Ken discussed changes to the Backchannel BIRD:
- Changes were made to the .bti file format:
  - Model_Specific was changed to Protocol_Specific
- This is posted on the website
- Bob: It may be better to have a binary data format than using quoted
  strings
- Ken: This should be discussed by email
- Bob: It is not clear what goes in each file
  - More documentation is needed
- Ambrish: Could the slides be posted too?
- Fangyi: Did we resolve training control and communication?
  - There are 3 possibilities to end training
- Ken: We will try to use one parameter
- Fangyi: We also had a question about having adequate information for
  crosstalk
- Arpad: We start with each channel figuring it's own settings first
- Fangyi: Then in training mode there is no crosstalk
- Arpad: Maybe there should be two trainings
- Fangyi: It is more realistic to have crosstalk for training
- Arpad: It seems the aggressors should not be in training mode
  - The victim will not know what the noise source is
  - It will try to train out the crosstalk
- Fangyi: If the crosstalk is strong the RX could be totally confused
- Mike: The victim RX will want to control whether there is crosstalk during
  training

AR: Ken send Backchannel slides for posting

Ken: We should discuss our strategy for the other topics:
- It may be too much for us to discuss all topics each week
- Arpad: The order of submission to Open Forum doesn't matter
  - Walter prefers to get easy BIRDs out of the way
  - We have concentrated on Backchannel for two weeks
  - We will not discuss BIRD 121 only because Walter is not here

BIRD 135
- Arpad: This was scheduled for a vote last Friday but it didn't happen
  - There were comments about the appropriate set of types for values
  - It was pointed out that Tap and UI are not in the BNF
  - <decimal number> does not say that it is float
- Bob: Tap and UI are actually numbers
  - Why define True and False as string?
  - We don't need other numeric types as long as we have numbers
- Arpad: We don't have to get far into this
- Mike: It should be stated that Tap and UI are numbers
- Radek: We are not talking about binary representation
  - They are all strings
  - It is only necessary to say how True and False are represented
- Bob: So the Boolean strings would be unquoted
- Radek: yes
- Bob: Boolean usually evaluates to 0 or 1

Arpad showed page 187 of the IBIS 5.0 spec:

- Arpad: Bob's concern is covered in the BIRD
- John: This BNF describes the AMI file
  - The DLL implementation is a separate matter
- Arpad: Are we recommending this for a vote
- Mike: My concern was about how far the BNF should go
  - It could fully define the character sets or have no types for "value"
  - But if model makers can successfully use it as proposed that is OK
- Arpad: We have character rules and such in the text
- Radek moved to recommend the BIRD for voting in Open Forum
- Eckhard seconded
- The motion passed by acclamation

Arpad showed the AMI parameters in/out BIRD:
- Arpad: We should avoid rehashing things that are already decided
- Radek: It was a legitimate Open Forum question
  - The EDA tool should initialize values, the DLL does nothing
  - The existing specification does not require it that way
  - With versioning there should be no issue
- Arpad: Curtis was helpful on this but he is not here now
- Bob: Are quotes needed?
- Radek: They should not be used here, this is binary
- John: This guarantees that there would be no return string after AMI_Init
  - It also makes it so an empty string is equivalent to NULL
- Arpad highlighted a paragraph saying NULL pointers are not allowed
- John: This allows DLL writers to be lazy about checking for NULL pointers
  - The EDA tools have to be more careful, and that is OK
- Arpad: We didn't want the DLL to do strange things with pointers
  - We should resolve this by next week

Meeting ended.

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Next meeting: 26 July 2011 12:00pm PT

Next agenda:
1) Task list item discussions

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IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:

1) Simulator directives
