Minutes, IBIS Quality Task Group

1 December 2020

11:00-12:00 EST (08:00-09:00 PST)

ROLL CALL

Achronix Semiconductor:             Hansel Dsilva
Intel Corp.                         Michael Mirmak
Mentor, a Siemens Business          Arpad Muranyi
Micron Technology                 * Randy Wolff
Signal Integrity Software:        * Mike LaBonte
SPISim                              Wei-hsing Huang
Teraspeed Labs:                   * Bob Ross
Zuken USA:                        * Lance Wang
SAE ITC                             José Godoy

Everyone in attendance marked by *

NOTE: "AR" = Action Required.

-----------------------MINUTES ---------------------------
Mike LaBonte conducted the meeting.

Call for IBIS related patent disclosures:

- None

Call for opens:

- None

Review of previous meeting minutes:
Minutes from the November 10 and 17 meetings were reviewed.
Lance Wang moved to accept the minutes. Randy Wolff seconded the motion.
Without objection the minutes were accepted.


ARs:
- Bob Ross to determine if IBIS-ISS S element accepts variables as file names
  - Done. It does accept file names as parameters.


New parser bugs:
Bob Ross reported there were no new bug reports.

IBIS-ISS parser:
Mike LaBonte showed BUG214 draft 7.  He wondered if people outside the task group would
understand the description well enough.  Lance Wang suggested changing "minimal" to
"limited".  Bob Ross said the bullets were half way to a full specification.  Randy Wolff
noted some typos, which were corrected.  Bob said it should not be necessary to read
.included files.  Randy agreed, saying the .include directives must be inside IBIS-ISS
subckts, so the required subckt has already been found.  Only the interface between
.ibs/.ims files and IBIS-ISS was being checked, second level and beyond subckts would
not be checked.  Mike deleted the provision about reading .include files.

Mike asked if the question about handling file names specified by variables would be
moot in that case.  It was not expected that variable file names would need special
handling.  Randy felt that ground terminals would not be prohibited in .ims and .ibs
files, they were only prohibited in .iss files.  Mike asked if ground was prohibited
in calls.  Randy said it was supported, but it would be A_gnd.  Mike deleted "and in
.ibs or .ims files".

Bob suggested deleting the original bug description text, pushed to the bottom.
Mike did that.

Mike asked if the examples in the bug looked correct.  Randy showed the example files
and simulation results.  He said the .ims content was OK, but there was an HSPICE
error for the IBIS-ISS content.  He showed in an example .iss file that a "$ Line
Continuation, Parameter Passing" comment caused a problem because it appeared in the
middle of continuation lines for a .subckt statement.  HSPICE required "$" comments
to appear only after all contents for a statement.  Mike suggested replacing the ISS
example text in the bug with the new example file contents.

In Randy's example, a and b were passed successfully, but it should have failed due
to local scoping.  Randy tried different settings in HSPICE.  Bob said a and b were
part of an equation, so they were defined.  Randy said the test showed that HSPICE
was not treating local and global parameters as expected.  Bob said Randy had changed
a terminal 11 to ref.  Randy said that was to avoid a conflict.  Bob asked if .model
had to be grouped with the S element.  It didn't matter.

Mike asked if we were ready to consider the bug filed.  Bob said he would add Randy's
final subcircuit to draft 8 to create a draft 9, which would be considered filed as
the official BUG214.

We briefly reviewed the example Touchstone file.  Randy said there was a typo at the
beginning of the Touchstone 2.0 spec, "two-port data order".  Lance asked if tschk2
would pass that. Randy tested and found that it failed tschk2.

AR: Mike to send BUG214 draft 8
AR: Randy Wolff to send updated IBIS-ISS example
AR: Bob Ross to add updated IBIS-ISS example to BUG214 and post


Tabled topics (no discussion without motion):
  - BIRD181.2

Mike LaBonte moved to adjourn. Randy Wolff seconded. Without objection the meeting ended.

Meeting ended: 11:14 ET

Next meeting December 8, 2020
