Minutes from the 20 Oct 2020 IBIS Quality Task Group meeting are attached.
Mike
Minutes, IBIS Quality Task Group
20 October 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 October 6 meeting were reviewed. Bob Ross moved to approve.
Lance Wang seconded. Without objection the minutes were approved.
ARs:
- Mike LaBonte to update and email IBIS-ISS parsing bug report
- Done but not sent
- Bob Ross also had sent a second draft.
New parser bugs:
Bob Ross reported there were no new bug reports.
IBIS-ISS parser:
Bob Ross showed his draft 2 of BUG214. He renamed it draft 3 for new edits. He
said
the parts written by Mike LaBonte had not been altered. The new text added
checking
of references to IBIS-ISS from .ims files and from multi-lingual.
Lance Wang noted that parameters could be specified in multiple places. He
felt that
could be a lot of work to handle correctly. Mike LaBonte said checking
parameters
fully would require a full parser, that would read everything into memory. Bob
said
multi-lingual models starting with IBIS 4.0 would be checked. Mike said
IBIS-ISS
came later than 4.0. It was introduced by BIRD116.2, incorporated into IBIS 6.0.
Bob changed 4.0 to 6.0 in his draft.
We discussed aspects of preference order for various means of setting
parameters.
Bob felt that number/string type checking should be performed. Mike felt that
intrinsic
element parameters could be checked rigidly, throwing errors, because their
usage
is documented. Parameters created in subckt definitions could only be checked
for
consistency because it was not known which type was actually intended. Also we
could
warn when a parameter appeared in an X element call but was not used in the
definition.
Bob added checks related to parameter passing to the document.
Mike noted that we had previously decided not to specify in-depth checking.
Bob said
that was a decision yet to be made. Mike agreed that the cost might not be too
much,
and we were not in a hurry to complete the ibischk update.
Bob said there was an intrinsic parameter that specified the name of a file to
read.
Mike said that would increase the complexity of the parser. Lance felt that
extensive
checking was not necessary, and that parameters in particular could get
complicated.
Bob showed examples of expressions that could be hard to check. Mike suggested
that
expressions needed to be checked, but a full syntax check would not be
necessary.
The presence of arithmetic operators in an expression would indicate that it was
of numeric type, and that might be sufficient for checking. Bob said we should
have
interface checks, and everything about the interface between the call and the
definition
should be checked. Mike felt that a useful level of checking would be to check
for
syntax that is legal for HSPICE or some other simulator, but not legal for
IBIS-ISS.
Bob said many of these checks would apply to EMD and EMS files.
Mike said we should resolve the overlap between his text and the new text from
Bob.
Bob said Mike's text was very detailed, more appropriate for a code change
specification.
Mike suggested keeping his text in draft 3, to be considered for deletion in the
next meeting.
Bob suggested include statements might be handled by producing a flattened file.
Mike said that should be up to the developer. Bob said it also didn't matter
much if
the files were parsed into memory or read repeatedly. Mike agreed, with the
exception
that certain checks could only be performed after all IBIS-ISS contents had
been read,
which could require retaining some information.
Bob said we would need to decide if include statements should be allowed to
reference
files residing above the IBIS file tree. Mike suggested that would be a good
Open
Forum discussion topic.
AR: Bob Ross to update BUG214 draft to describe parameters that name files
Tabled topics (no discussion without motion):
- BIRD181.2
Bob Ross moved to adjourn. Lance Wang seconded. Without objection the meeting
ended.
Meeting ended: 12:17 ET
Next meeting October 27, 2020
