[ibis-macro] Minutes from the 17 & 24 Apr 2012 ibis-atm meetings
- From: Mike LaBonte <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: IBIS-ATM <ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:38:14 -0400
Minutes from the 17 & 24 Apr 2012 ibis-atm meetings are attached.
Mike
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 24 Apr 2012
Members (asterisk for those attending):
Agilent: * Fangyi Rao
* Radek Biernacki
Altera: * David Banas
Ansys: Samuel Mertens
* Dan Dvorscak
* Curtis Clark
Arrow Electronics: Ian Dodd
Cadence Design Systems: Terry Jernberg
* Ambrish Varma
Feras Al-Hawari
Celsionix: Kellee Crisafulli
Cisco Systems: Ashwin Vasudevan
Syed Huq
Ericsson: Anders Ekholm
IBM: * Greg Edlund
Intel: Michael Mirmak A
LSI Logic: Wenyi Jin
Maxim Integrated Products: Mahbubul Bari
Mentor Graphics: * John Angulo
Zhen Mu
* Arpad Muranyi
Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Micron Technology: Randy Wolff
NetLogic Microsystems: Ryan Couts
Nokia-Siemens Networks: * Eckhard Lenski
QLogic Corp. * James Zhou
Sigrity: Brad Brim
* Kumar Keshavan
Ken Willis
SiSoft: * Walter Katz
Todd Westerhoff
Doug Burns
* Mike LaBonte
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:
- Arpad update BIRDs 117 & 118 to generalize parameter references
- Done
- Walter/Bob update Table example based on discussion requests
- No update
- Arpad to propose IBIS spec changes to clarify ISS D2A & A2D interfaces
- In progress
- Ambrish update BIRD 145 for pad to pin mapping and other clarifications
- Tabled, waiting for outcome of other issues
-------------
New Discussion:
BIRD 123.3:
- Walter showed the latest BIRD 123.3 draft
- Walter: The "half peak to peak" language has been used in 3 places
- Rx_Clock_Recovery_Sj should use "ideal_time" as reference
- Arpad: Is that ideal clock time?
- Walter: It is halfway between the median of the eye crossing zero
- James: Are the zero crossings available in statistical mode?
- Walter: It is based on the median crossing based on probability distribution
- Alternative methods are welcome
- Walter: Rx_Rj is now defined based on time
- James found several places where this change had to be made
- James: Rx_Sj should be based on Rx_Dj time
- Walter: Yes, same for Rx_DCD too
- Walter showed changes to Tx_DCD
- Walter: I recommend a straw man vote in the open forum
Arpad showed an email from Walter about UI:
- Walter: The question is how to pass Model_Specific params of type UI to a DLL
- The conclusion is that it should be fractional UI, not converted to seconds
- Do we need a BIRD?
- Bob: No
- Arpad: Michael Mirmak plans to use our decision for the editorial work
- Radek: This applies anywhere, not just Model_Specific
- Walter: Agree
- James: Sample_interval is in seconds?
- Arpad: Yes
- James: The spec does not give the units
- Radek: The editorial group should add that
- Bob: We might already cover this
Arpad showed a new Analog Model Boundary Definition BIRD draft:
- Arpad: One small paragraph is added
- Bob and Radek approved
- Arpad: This would apply to our other language definitions
- Bob: That would include Touchstone
- James: Does this apply to the A2D?
- Arpad: It defines the places to be probed
BIRD 117.4 and 118.3 updates:
- Arpad showed BIRD 117.4 draft 3 and described the changes
- Arpad: No change about relative paths has been made
- Also no change for parameters within "this" IBIS file
- Walter: In EBD we have "*.ibs" to mean it is in this file
- Radek: There was discussion whether it should be allowed in the IBIS file
- Arpad: We decided to allow it, but with keywords to enclose it
- Arpad: Kukal had a question asked if two different AMI files could be used
- He suggested prohibiting that
- It might be a parser problem
- Bob: I have concerns about putting trees in IBIS
- This is becoming logistically complicated
- It is different from AMI rules, no Reserved_Parameters required for example
- Kumar: We should not have those requirements here
- Arpad: Agree
- Walter: There is a difference between syntax and context
- Bob: Is Usage Info supported?
- Walter: Yes, but Out does not make sense
- Bob: The rules for this should be documented
- This may pose problems writing the parser
- Arpad: The goal is to pass in values that might come from other files
- We have wanted this for some time
- Bob: Complication proves it is not a good approach
- I am leaning toward Walter's approach
- Ambrish: What if it is not an AMI model?
- Bob: Use IBIS
- We have to get this under control
- Walter: We need a syntax that knows nothing about Model_Specific, etc.
- Then another for context rules for AMI
- Then another for context rules for ISS
- Ambrish: Agree
- Bob: It should be separated out of IBIS
- Arpad: The immediate goal is to pass parameters to [External Circuit]
- Walter: The parser will have to have two parts
- It will be painful if syntax checking is combined with context checking
- Bob: We have funding issues for parser development, can't afford big changes
- Arpad: Is this 5.2 or 6.0?
- Bob: It just has to be well documented
- If we break something fixing it is a priority
Arpad showed the old ARs:
- Arpad: One is to find a way to parameterize models
- The need for this has existed for years
- Bob: I support BIRD 116
- Arpad: That has no parameterization
- Walter: Several of us want parameter trees
- We should have a vote which path to go down
-------------
Next meeting: 01 May 2012 12:00pm PT
Next agenda:
1) Task list item discussions
-------------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 17 Apr 2012
Members (asterisk for those attending):
Agilent: Fangyi Rao
* Radek Biernacki
Altera: * David Banas
Ansys: Samuel Mertens
* Dan Dvorscak
* Curtis Clark
Arrow Electronics: Ian Dodd
Cadence Design Systems: Terry Jernberg
* Ambrish Varma
Feras Al-Hawari
Celsionix: Kellee Crisafulli
Cisco Systems: Ashwin Vasudevan
Syed Huq
Ericsson: Anders Ekholm
IBM: Greg Edlund
Intel: * Michael Mirmak A
LSI Logic: Wenyi Jin
Maxim Integrated Products: Mahbubul Bari
Mentor Graphics: * John Angulo
Zhen Mu
* Arpad Muranyi
Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Micron Technology: Randy Wolff
NetLogic Microsystems: Ryan Couts
Nokia-Siemens Networks: * Eckhard Lenski
QLogic Corp. * James Zhou
Sigrity: Brad Brim
Kumar Keshavan
Ken Willis
SiSoft: * Walter Katz
Todd Westerhoff
Doug Burns
* Mike LaBonte
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:
- Michael M.: Need to ask question about code passed parameters
- Also some questions about units
- Five questions
--------------------------
Call for patent disclosure:
- None
-------------
Review of ARs:
- Arpad send notification of upcoming vote to the reflector.
- Done
- There may be questions about what we are voting on
- Walter/Bob prepare CTLE parameter string example
- Done
- There are other related requests
- Arpad to propose IBIS spec changes to clarify ISS D2A & A2D interfaces
- Found a good location in the spec for this
- Arpad to write a new revision of BIRD 117 and 118 to generalize references
to parameters in files (.ami or any)
- Done
- Ambrish update BIRD 145 for pad to pin mapping and other clarifications
- Tabled, waiting for outcome of other issues
-------------
New Discussion:
Questions from Michael M.:
- Units for sample int, bit time, clock times:
- Michael: It is not stated that units are seconds
- Walter: Numbers are floating point, the units are seconds
- James: We should document this in the new spec
- Michael: It will be in 5.1, a BIRD may be needed
- David: We could simply state that all units are MKS unless otherwise stated
- Bob: The editorial group can handle this
- Radek: Are unit suffixes accepted?
- Michael & Arpad: No
- For Gaussian, Dual-Dirac, and DjRj types Float and UI are both permitted:
- Michael: Can be fractional UI, can be seconds, could be tricky
- Walter: This is cleared up in BIRD 123
- I added "seconds or UI" to all params in BIRD 123
- This should be done for the jitter parameters
- Every Reserved_Par of type Float should say if it is in seconds?
- Michael: Do we need Type Time to use instead of Float?
- Walter: Model makers only need to specify on docs what the data type is
- Bob: We don't want a specific type
- Michael: Would a tool interpret a number a fraction of a UI if type not
given?
- Radek: It should be seconds unless type is given as UI
- Walter: For time params Float is always seconds and UI is always UI
- James: How is UI passed to the DLL?
- Walter: It is an AMI_Init() float argument in seconds, bit_time
- Michael: Rx_Receiver_Sensitivity can't be UI so it is always Float
BIRD 144.3:
- Arpad: Walter motioned to recommend rejection to the Open Forum
- Walter: A No vote means untabling and having a vote
- Bob: We should just return it to the Open Forum without recommendation
- Arpad: We are tasked with making a recommendation
- Bob: An s2p, s4p, or s7p could be configured using [External Circuit]
- Walter: The current BIRD 144 needs much work for termination issues
- IBM is OK with BIRD 116
- Arpad: Voting a BIRD down is not the end, anyone can write a new BIRD
- We have many other BIRDs that need our attention
- We should make a recommendation on 144 though
- Radek: There is no deadline, we can keep it tabled
- We need to avoid endless discussion of it though
- Arpad: It can be opened as a new BIRD anyway
- Mike L: We could have three votes for this
- Whether to return to Open Forum, whether to recommend, what to recommend
- Ambrish: We do not have to make a recommendation
- Walter: We should find out how much support it has
- Arpad: We should try voting
- Mike motioned to return BIRD 144.3 to Open Forum
- Radek: Without recommendation?
- Mike withdrew his motion
- Radek motioned to table BIRD 144.3 for discussion
- Walter seconded
- Arpad: A yes vote is to table, no to keep discussion or abstain
- Roll call vote:
Agilent: Y
Altera: Y
Ansys: Y
Cadence Design Systems: Y
Intel: A
Mentor Graphics: Y
Nokia-Siemens Networks: Y
QLogic: Y
SiSoft: Y
Teraspeed: Y
- The motion passed with 9 yes, 0 no, 1 abstain
- Bob motioned to table BIRD 145.2 for discussion
- Walter seconded
- No one objected
- The vote passed by acclamation
- Bob: Three authors of the multi-lingual proposal are here today
BIRD 117.4/118/3 draft 2:
- Arpad showed a list of changes
- Arpad: Full parameter tree paths are used to avoid ambiguity
- Might still need to resolve reserved vs. model_specific
- Arpad showed BIRD 117.4 draft 2
- Arpad: Converter_Parameters is added
- The separator parameter between tree levels is a period
- File names are part of it
- Radek: Can files be in a subdirectory?
- Arpad: We have no language yet to allow paths
- We would have to deal with separator characters and line length problems
- Walter: It not not be a full path, it would be relative
- BIRD 121 describes it this way
- Arpad: EDA tools may offer ways for users to make specific value selections
- The actual tree data is bracketed by IBIS keywords
- Walter: Parentheses would be better than periods
- Bob would like to table this
- He could make a recommendation for next week
- Bob: This is changing the rules for parameters
- We used to have the parameters on one line
- Walter: We should table this until an alternative is suggested
- Bob: The complexity is excessive
- The rules are impossible to check
- Ambrish: Why impossible?
- Bob: Each Converter_Parameters must be on a separate line
- On D_to_A there can be variable numbers of arguments
- Arpad: The rules are spelled out
- Bob: We can't build a parser against this
- It is hard to know if each item is a number or a parameter
- The 120 character limit becomes a problem
- Walter: That limit can be increased
- This is not a very complex syntax
- This should be tabled for now
- Arpad: This is the first introduction of this change, tabling would be
premature
- James: The logic needs to be more clear
- Radek: We might not want the file name before the parameters if it is "this
file"
- Bob: Parameters should be in a separate file
- Radek: We might not want to allow referencing other IBIS files
- Walter: EBD has a file mapping section
- Arpad: Please send any suggested changes to this by email before next week
-------------
Next meeting: 24 Apr 2012 12:00pm PT
Next agenda:
1) Task list item discussions
-------------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
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- » [ibis-macro] Minutes from the 17 & 24 Apr 2012 ibis-atm meetings - Mike LaBonte