[ibis-macro] Minutes from the 26 May and 02 Jun 2009 ibis-atm meetings
- From: "Mike LaBonte (milabont)" <milabont@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "IBIS-ATM" <ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 21:03:16 -0400
Minutes from the 26 May and 02 Jun 2009 ibis-atm meetings are attached.
Mike
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 02 June 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:
- Walter: Continue IBIS-IS edits
- Done and sent to the list
- Todd: Write IBIS s-param BIRD
- Still working on it
- 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:
Continued review of IBIS-IS documents:
Walter showed the IBIS-IS document and Arpad's comments
- Walter changed all references to HSPICE-RH to HSPICE
- We need to decide whether to eliminate all references to HSPICE
- Walter: Comments about .ALTER, .PRINT, .PROBE were removed
- Walter: Changes about {} and [] were left in
- Walter: We may want a more limited character set
- Some SPICEs may have problems with certain characters
- Walter: We should change "avoid X" to "X is illegal"
- Bob: We shouldn't be more restrictive than necessary
- Walter: For example, the minus sign in node names
- Walter marked this for later discussion
- Walter: Anything illegal in HSPICE is illegal in IBIS-IS
- "Included only" means legal but not as the first character of a name
- The "First line of a netlist" rule was deleted
- IBIS-IS has no main level netlists
- Arpad: Will we need the I element?
- Walter: It is not needed for interconnect
- Bob: We included V because it is used for controlled sources
- Walter: Actually it is used for shorting
- Bob: And it can be used for current sources
- Walter: Hierarchical node names are not allowed
- Walter: Diodes and transistors are not supported
- Walter: X is a synonym for MEG
- Bob: We should support that
- Files should not be rejected for having minor discrepancies
- MIL is also a supported scaling unit (= 25.4e-6)
- Walter: We will not support .OPTION EXPMAX
- Arpad: That might be an issue
- Walter: We should discuss the option needs of simulators
- Arpad: Will our subckts need to specify options?
- Michael M: We should not allow that
- We should discuss this once we are sure what EXPMAX is intended for
- Walter: PARHIER is not supported
- Arpad: This might break some legitimate circuits
- Walter: Agree, this needs discussion
- Rules regarding multiple definitions of the same parameter:
- Walter deleted "or .OPTION statement"
- Also deleted the sentence about simulator warnings
- Walter: The entire section about schematic netlists is deleted
- Also deleted hierarchy parameters and the M parameter
- Arpad: The M parameter connects M number of elements in parallel
- It was used for transistor sizing
- Mike L: It seems easy to pre-process this
- Walter left the M parameter provision in
- Walter: We rarely see .PARAM in interconnect
- Arpad: It can be useful for long expressions that are used repeatedly
- Arpad: Do we support string parameters?
- These were introduced for elements that take string args
- We may not need it
- Walter made changes to the parameter passing order table:
- We will not have SWEEP parameters
- We will not have library parameters
- Walter: We will not support user defined functions
- Some built-in functions are also deleted:
- val
- relational operators
- Walter: HSPICE has at least 2 conditional mechanisms:
- The .if/.else mechanism
- Operator conditionals
- Bob: Did we keep the conditionals?
- Walter: No
- Arpad: We should keep the ternary operator
- Walter: Then we need the conditionals too
- Mike L: This can create non-linearities
- Walter: But it is evaluated statically
- Bob: Conditionals are used only in expressions
- Arpad: Conditionals can change a value at points in time
- Mike L: But that conflicts with the "static evaluation" rule
- Walter restored the conditional operators
- Walter deleted paragraphs about "cells"
- We will have to discuss the section on Library Integrity
- It gives rules that are useful
We revisited parameter hierarchy:
- Walter restored deleted rules on this
Arpad asked members to take time to review the IBIS-IS document
Mike L asked if we picked up any new items for the wish list
- None identified
Next meeting: 9 June 2009 12:00pm PT
--------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 26 May 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:
- Walter: Contact Synopsys about remaining documents
- They sent more documents
- Todd: Write IBIS s-param BIRD
- Still working on it
- 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:
Continued review of IBIS-IS documents:
Arpad showed the new document from Walter:
- Randy: A lot of pages about .SUBCKT were added
- Arpad: There probably are few changes in the beginning part
"Input netlist and data entry"
- Randy: The reference to HSPICE RF should be cleaned up
- Mike L: We can delete most of the first page
- Bob: We will want the 1024 character limit
- Randy: That is a file name length limit
- Mike L: We might decide to use IBIS length limits
- Arpad deleted some text with change tracking enabled.
- Arpad: Should we specify a file extension?
- Mike L: Maybe, if IBISCHK will parse it
- Bob: The .INCLUDE statement does not require any extension
- There will be no .END statement
- Arpad: Do we want to limit identifier lengths?
- Mike L: We may want to limit file and subckt names so they fit in IBIS
- Bob: The OS should set the limit
- IBIS should have had less limits
- The original idea was email and printing compatibility
- Arpad: New editing and email tools eliminate these limits
- We will revisit this later
"Input Line Format"
- Mike L: Can we eliminate the broken references?
- Arpad: We were going to keep the ones targeting pages we retain
- Mike L: Can we eliminate features that seem to be specific to HSPICE RF?
- Not sure
- Arpad: Do we keep the 1024 character line limit?
- There are sometimes problems with long lines
- Arpad: Both + and \ seem to be supported for continuation
- Mike L: \ may allow identifier continuation
- Randy: Or expressions
- We deleted the wildcard feature for .PRINT, etc.
- Arpad: Should we reword the conversion of {} to [] ?
- Mike L: This looks like a pre-processor translation
- Randy: [] are sometimes used for array names
- Bob: We could make {} illegal
- Arpad: We shouldn't do that
- This was reworded, but the net effect is the same
- Mike L: There does not seem to be a definition of delimiters
- Walter: It is in there somewhere
- We decided to keep the "time keywords" restriction
"Special Characters"
- Mike L: What is "Included only"?
- Walter: It means anywhere but the first character of an identifier
- Minus character has different rules for HSPICE and HSPICE RF?
- Mike L: We should use the more restrictive rule
- Arpad: That could be a compatibility problem
- Walter: We do not have to be compatible with the whole world
- Randy: It may not hurt to be RF compatible
- Bob: Some of these are pathological cases
Arpad: Should we continue reviewing item by item in committee?
- That could take months
- Walter: Could do the edits for review
- Arpad: With change tracking we could review the red edits
AR: Walter continue IBIS-IS edits
Next meeting: 2 June 2009 12:00pm PT
--------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
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