[ibis-macro] Status of IBIS-ISS Draft Revisions
- From: "Mirmak, Michael" <michael.mirmak@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: IBIS-ATM <ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:00:24 -0600
As several people have asked, here's a more formal status report on the editing
of the IBIS-ISS draft document. As I will be unable to attend Tuesday's
meeting, I thought I would "kick off" some discussions and get resolutions on
key issues via e-mail.
- MM
6/16/2010 - IBIS-ISS Draft Update Status
The document is unfortunately not readily consumable by the wider industry as
written today, and would, without major changes, not be a useful reference for
users who do not have extensive experience SPICE experience. The first round
of edits concentrate on making the document better organized , mostly for
simplification and clarity. Edits focus on word choice, compliance with
industry standards writing practices and self-consistency. Many technical
concerns have arisen, which are detailed below. A "sense of ATM Task Group"
for each of these issues and proposals is requested.
Many edits are motivated by undefined terms, terms which are used only once or
twice, or terms which change meaning in context within the document. Adding a
glossary of terms is strongly suggested. Terms that cause definition or usage
issues include:
- delimiter
- token
- command
- keyword
- statement
- card
A revision 0.3 draft and list of changes will be made available for formal
review shortly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Proposals, Recommendations and Calls for Comment
1) Only a few "dot" statements are now permitted in the specification. These
are:
.ends
.include
.model (only used for W-element and S-element definitions)
.parameter
.subckt
This excludes several common "dot" statements, including:
.title
.lib
.macro
.end
Recommendation: maintain exclusion of .macro and .lib. Add .title and .end
(particularly the latter). Approved?
2) Proposal (related to libraries/.lib): all parameters now have local scope
and must be explicitly passed into subcircuit instantiations. Approved?
3) Older SPICE variants assume that the first line of an input file is a
comment, regardless of the presence of a comment character. Recommendation: add
support for this assumption. Approved?
4) SPICE variants commonly support ".inc" as well as ".include" and ".param" in
addition to ".parameter". The current document is inconsistent on whether
these two abbreviations are legal or not.
Recommendation: support ".inc" and ".include"; support ".param" and
".parameter".
5) The current document contains no provision for recognizing the version of
ISS supported. Recommendation: assuming that ISS will be revised, a .version
or first-line (comment) version identifier should be required. Approved?
6) Some SPICE variants support input files containing multiple netlists, so
long as these are separated by .end. Recommendation: preserve this
functionality. Approved?
Other related posts:
