IBIS Macromodel Task Group

Meeting date: 22 February 2022

Members (asterisk for those attending):
Achronix Semiconductor:       Hansel Dsilva
Amazon:                       John Yan
ANSYS:                        Curtis Clark
                            * Wei-hsing Huang
Cadence Design Systems:     * Ambrish Varma
                              Jared James
Google:                       Zhiping Yang
Intel:                      * Michael Mirmak
                              Kinger Cai
                              Alaeddin Aydiner
Keysight Technologies:      * Fangyi Rao
                            * Majid Ahadi Dolatsara
                              Ming Yan
                              Radek Biernacki
                              Rui Yang
Luminous Computing            David Banas
Marvell                       Steve Parker
Mathworks (SiSoft):           Walter Katz
                              Mike LaBonte
Micron Technology:          * Randy Wolff
                            * Justin Butterfield
Missouri S&T                  Chulsoon Hwang
Siemens EDA (Mentor):       * Arpad Muranyi
Teraspeed Labs:             * Bob Ross
Zuken USA:                    Lance Wang

The meeting was led by Arpad Muranyi.  Randy Wolff took the minutes.

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Opens:

- Michael had a quick question on the root name BIRD needing feedback before 
he sends out draft 3 to the email reflector.

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Review of ARs:

- Walter to send out BIRD213.1 draft 13 incorporating Feb. 15 changes.
  - Done.
  
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Call for patent disclosure:

- None.

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Review of Meeting Minutes:

Arpad asked for any comments or corrections to the minutes of the February 15th
meeting.  Michael moved to approve the minutes.  Randy seconded the motion.
There were no objections.

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New Discussion:

BIRD213.1 draft 13, PAMn:
Arpad shared draft 13.  Arpad reviewed the BIRD last night.  Randy had found 
some typos to fix as well. Arpad shared an email chain including comments from 
Fangyi, Arpad, and Randy.

Arpad edited a Draft 14.  Fangyi agreed with Arpad's comment about combining 
discussion of NRZ and PAM4.  Arpad copied his new text into Draft 14.

Fangyi agreed about Arpad's comments on nominal eye.  Fangyi thought some 
statements in Other Notes should be in Usage Rules in the PAM_Offsets 
section.  Fangyi suggested clearing up the language on nominal eye and replace 
the entire Usage Rules section with suggested text from his email.  There are 
separate descriptions for time domain and statistical simulations.

In the statistical simulation description, Arpad asked if we needed to have an 
equation to define the nominal eye.  Fangyi noted you want the middle eye 
because that one is usually the best one to reference.  

Ambrish asked why we need the offset for time domain simulation.  Fangyi said 
each eye has its own slicer, and with only one clock times returned, you need 
to know the sampling time offsets of the other slicers that are not the 
nominal eye.  

Arpad asked if you should have separate jitter for each eye slicer.  Fangyi 
did not think the slicer would add much jitter to the sampling time.  Fangyi 
noted that for threshold voltage levels, you move sampling location 
vertically, while for offsets you are moving the sampling time horizontally.  

Walter joined and asked why we needed to define the nominal eye for 
statistical simulations.  Fangyi noted there is no clock times in statistical 
simulations. Fangyi said we need a definition of t0 if Rx_Decision_time is not 
present.

The first and third paragraphs of the old Usage Rules section were deleted.  
Randy thought a sentence about positive and negative values that was deleted 
seemed important to clarify in the new text.  Fangyi noted a description did 
exist for the time domain section but needed to be added for the statistical 
simulations paragraph.  This was corrected.

Arpad noted in his new text there was still a sentence with "the electrical 
interface to either the driver or the receiver is differential".  This was 
edited to "the electrical interfaces to both the driver and the receiver are 
differential".

Two instances of "Parameter" were changed to lower case.

AR: Arpad to send out the BIRD213.1 draft 14.


Root name BIRD discussion:
Michael said for AMI_parameters_out, the EDA tool can compare the root name 
returned by the DLL to the root name in the AMI file.  Arpad confirmed his 
tool does this.  

Michael said for AMI_parameters_in, the match could only be done by the model.

Michael noted a clarification in the BIRD added that "The EDA tool must report 
any root name mismatch detected, but may choose to continue to stop simulation 
at this point."  

Arpad asked if you have only "in" parameters, does the model have to return a 
blank string with just the root name.  In that case the EDA tool could check 
the root name. Michael highlighted an existing sentence on page 225 describing 
the AMI_Init function will return nothing but the root name if there are no 
out parameters to output.

Michael wanted to confirm that exercising the EDA tool is the only way to 
check for the root name in the output string.  Walter and Randy agreed with 
this.

- Michael: Motion to adjourn.
- Ambrish: Second.
- Arpad: Thank you all for joining.

AR: Arpad to send out the BIRD213.1 draft 14.
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Next meeting: 1 March 2022 12:00pm PT
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IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:

1) Simulator directives
