[ibis-macro] Minutes from the 14 Apr 2009 ibis-atm meeting
- From: "Mike LaBonte (milabont)" <milabont@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "IBIS-ATM" <ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:56:18 -0400
Minutes from the 14 Apr 2009 ibis-atm meeting are attached.
Mike
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 14 April 2009
Members (asterisk for those attending):
Adge Hawes, IBM
Ambrish Varma, Cadence Design Systems
* Anders Ekholm, Ericsson
* Arpad Muranyi, Mentor Graphics Corp.
Barry Katz, SiSoft
* Bob Ross, Teraspeed Consulting Group
* Brad Brim, Sigrity
Brad Griffin, Cadence Design Systems
Chris McGrath, Synopsys
David Banas, Xilinx
* Deepak Ramaswany, Ansoft
Donald Telian, consultant
Doug White, Cisco Systems
* Eckhard Lenski, Nokia-Siemens Networks
Essaid Bensoudane, ST Microelectronics
Fangyi Rao, Agilent
Ganesh Narayanaswamy, ST Micro
Gang Kang, Sigrity
Hemant Shah, Cadence Design Systems
Ian Dodd, Agilent
Jerry Chuang, Xilinx
Joe Abler, IBM
* John Angulo, Mentor Graphics
John Shields, Mentor Graphics
Ken Willis, Cadence Design Systems
Kumar Keshavan, Sigrity
Lance Wang, Cadence Design Systems
Luis Boluna, Cisco Systems
Michael Mirmak, Intel Corp.
* Mike LaBonte, Cisco Systems
Mike Steinberger, SiSoft
Mustansir Fanaswalla, Xilinx
Patrick O'Halloran, Tiburon Design Automation
Paul Fernando, NCSU
Pavani Jella, TI
Radek Biernacki, Agilent (EESof)
* Randy Wolff, Micron Technology
Ray Comeau, Cadence Design Systems
Richard Mellitz, Intel
Richard Ward, Texas Instruments
* Samuel Mertens, Ansoft
Sam Chitwood, Sigrity
Sanjeev Gupta, Agilent
Shangli Wu, Cadence Design Systems
Sid Singh, Extreme Networks
Stephen Scearce, Cisco Systems
* Steve Pytel, Ansoft
Syed Huq, Cisco Systems
Syed Sadeghi, ST Micro
Ted Mido, Synopsys
Terry Jernberg, Cadence Design Systems
Todd Westerhoff, SiSoft
Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Vikas Gupta, Xilinx
Vuk Borich, Agilent
* Walter Katz, SiSoft
Zhen Mu, Cadence Design Systems
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opens:
--------------------------
Call for patent disclosure:
- No one declared a patent.
-------------
Review of ARs:
- Todd: Write IBIS s-param BIRD
- Still working on it
- It may be done in 2 weeks or so
- Arpad: Write parameter passing syntax proposal (BIRD draft)
for *-AMS models in IBIS that is consistent with the
parameter passing syntax of the AMI models
- TBD
- TBD: Propose a parameter passing syntax for the SPICE
- [External ...] also?
- TBD
- Arpad: Review the documentation (annotation) in the macro libraries.
- Deferred until a demand arises or we have nothing else to do
-------------
New Discussion:
Samuel Mertens presented on the Compact Modeling Council (CMC):
- Slide 1:
- CMC work has gone on for about a year
- Slide 2:
- Various transistor models have been standardized
- Work was done in conjunction with a university
- Bob: Which standards bodies are involved?
- CMC, under GEIA
- There are 44 member companies
- There are regular phone meetings
- Samuel is the committee chair
- Slide 3:
- The lang= directive incorporates existing languages
- It allows a block to be written in a language outside the standard
- Slide 4:
- This shows a list of companies
- Slide 5:
- Candidates for the base language:
- Spectre
- Verilog A
- Cadence will not allow CMC to direct the Spectre language
- Bob: Cadence is not on the vendor list
- Samuel: It is only a partial list
- Bob: Is the committee favoring Spectre or Verilog A?
- Samuel: Spectre may be a little ahead
- Arpad: Is there any consideration of AMS languages?
- Samuel: No, but there could be interfaces
- It is being designed for flexibility
- Slide 6:
- Berkeley Spice is not defined by a formal grammar
- The standard language must be case-sensitive
- Bob: Does formal mean having a BNF?
- Samuel: We have not decided
- We will not allow positional arguments except the terminal list
- No key letter ID is allowed
- Currently there will be problems using multiple technology files
- Arpad: This seems to go beyond Spice
- Samuel: Every circuit is Spice-like
- Slide 7:
- The plan is to choose the base language by Q2-2009
- The plan is to release by Q4 2009
- Slide 8:
- Do we want to work on this?
- What elements would we want to add?
- Arpad: We would need S and W elements
- Mike L: IBIS could be a B element or built from other elements
- Arpad: Behavioral modeling would be important to us
- Samuel: This can be used for digital elements
- Arpad: That raises the complexity, adding boolean nodes for example
- Bob: IBIS support may mean reading IBIS files or just equivalent circuits
- The IBIS format is just a collection of data
- Samuel: We are interested in working together on this
- Arpad: Board and IC tools describe footprints in different ways
- It might be nice to address board features too
- Samuel: With a new language spec we have this flexibility
- Bob: Why would other tools want to support this?
- They make money from having their own languages
- Samuel: Customers want to save money by using only one language
- Ansoft would only have to support one language
- Design kit makers might adopt this
- Tools would be forced to support it
- Arpad: If this becomes widespread among IC makers it will need IP protection
- Samuel: There will be an API standard for proprietary models
- Arpad: How about encryption?
- Samuel: It is hard to talk about this until we have the language
- Walter: Who is on the core committee for this?
- Samuel: ADI, Agilent, Ansoft, Cypress, Freescale, IBM, Cadence, NXP
- Mike L: If someone wants to "bridge" the groups they would need contact info:
- smertens@xxxxxxxxxx
- Samuel: I could present status updates now and then
- Arpad: Is the time-line realistic for such a large group?
- Samuel: I am hopeful, there is great interest
- Walter: Are there confidentiality issues in your meetings?
- Samuel: Historically not much, but there is potential
- Not everything is open to all members at all times
- Bob: Are draft documents ready?
- Samuel: We have drafts in both languages
- Arpad: We might be able to work together only if interconnect is involved
- Samuel: Interconnect has simple requirements
- Arpad: There might be physical models too
- Walter: It comes down to elements, nodes, parameters, and models
- Arpad: Why don't we go with this?
- Bob: We must consider future penetration
- Arpad: When might we see a tool using this?
- Mike L: HSPICE gives multiple ways to do things, is that what we wanted?
- Walter: Even Ansoft generates HSPICE, and we wanted that compatibility
- If we go down a new path there will be no tools to generate models
- Bob: We might want to have a liaison
Next meeting: 21 April 2009 12:00pm PT
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