[ibis-macro] Minutes from the 09 Jun and 16 Jun 2009 ibis-atm meetings
- From: "Mike LaBonte (milabont)" <milabont@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "IBIS-ATM" <ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:53:38 -0400
Minutes from the 09 Jun and 16 Jun 2009 ibis-atm meetings are attached.
Mike
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 16 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:
- 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:
Arpad: Is there any progress on IBIS-IS document edits?
- Walter: No changes have been made
Walter: We are functionally very close to finishing IBIS-IS
- Everyone supports the HSPICE subset we have defined
- The intent was to have EMD support general interconnect
- It may be better to focus on packages and DIMMs
- One view is "here is a connector and the circuit to model it"
- another view is "here is a circuit and how it can be used for a connector"
- Brad Brim has sent an alternative proposal
- Not sure if it was sent to many of us
- Somewhat like EMD
- Bob: The syntax is IBIS-like
Arpad: We had talked about the idea of a "signup sheet" but decided against it
- Walter: It would be good to know who will support it
- Arpad: Vendors probably will support it anyway
- Walter: We don't have to ask for a vote, just an informal yes/no
- Bob: In IBIS discussing product plans is out of bounds
- We probably don't have company authority to comment on release content
anyway
- Mike: There is currently no way to invoke IBIS-IS from IBIS
Removing all references to "HSPICE":
- Walter: We can just say it was extracted from the HSPICE manual
- Our stuff will be in a separate document
- Arpad: A single document would be better
- We had agreed to make the change in the editorial phase
Limited character set:
- Walter: Agree, this would make it easier to convert
- Arpad: We decided last week that the rules about '-' make sense
- Bob: We need an addendum for any changes we make to HSPICE
- Radek: Agree, it would be better to not have special rules
- Arpad: ELDO has a switch make make it understand different syntaxes
- Walter: We could only recommend avoiding certain characters
- We agreed on this
Exponent limits:
- Arpad: We may need to describe this even if we do not support it
- Walter: machines really have these limitations
- Bob: There is a range that should be practical
- Walter: Resistors under 10e-5 ohms are a problem
- Radek: It should not be in a subckt
- Arpad: Some spice tools have options others don't
- PARHIER is a new HSPICE feature
- Allows subckts to have local SCALE
- Other tools may not have this
- Radek: We should at least say what the default is
- Walter: SCALE is LTI, could be a valid feature
- Arpad: Had trouble with SCALE affecting a capacitance expression
- The expressions had nothing complicated in them
- Walter: We could not allow SCALE
- It's about having confidence that a circuit will work in many tools
- Arpad: The subckt may be used in a circuit that scales
- We would want to require subckt SCALE to be 1
- Mike: SCALE should not be used with externally imported subckts
- Or the imported subckts should be forced to SCALE=1
- Walter: We should keep it simple
- Arpad: PARHIER can ruin efforts to make use of global variables
- Walter: That is a risk
- Bob: Do we support .PARAM within subckts
- Walter: Yes
- It can be overridden by instance params
- Arpad: Should we support params on the subckt def line?
- Walter: No
- We will not say anything about PARHIER in IBIS-IS
- Arpad: Will our subckts be immune to PARHIER?
- Walter: They should be
- It is best to make the names very unique
- Arpad: With unique names PARHIER would have no effect
- Arpad: We will advise against using PARHIER
- Radek: We should not allow it
- Bob: .OPTION allowed in subckts?
- Walter: No
- Bob: All options affect simulations
- Arpad: We have to specify that params other than what we support
must have no effect
- For example, resistors must not support temperature coefficients
- Walter: This will take a long time if we pursue this level of detail
- Arpad: We should state that supporting feature that we do not specify
may cause problems.
Continued review of IBIS-IS documents:
Next meeting: 23 June 2009 12:00pm PT
--------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 09 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:
- Arpad: Walter is unable to join us today
--------------------------
Call for patent disclosure:
- No one declared a patent.
-------------
Review of ARs:
- 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:
Arpad: We had set a goal to have the IBIS-IS ready by the DAC Summit
- Bob: It should be possible to present on it by then
- Arpad: Walter sent an email saying it was close to ready
Arpad: There were some items that we put off in the last meeting
Arpad: Walter suggested we get a list of companies committing to IBIS-IS support
- Bob: Vendors only need to say if they support HSPICE syntax
- Most do in some form
- It is out of bounds to discuss vendor business plans in IBIS meetings
- Arpad: The question is if tools for bringing in IBIS files will support it
- Bob: IBIS needs EMD or something to do this anyway
- John: We could list companies working on the proposal
- We don't want to imply the committee process is redundant
- Mike: That is all we had for ICM
- Arpad: Walter is concerned about working on something that might not be
supported
- Bob: There should be no need for vendor tools to check that incoming files
have only the specific IBIS-IS subset of HSPICE
- Arpad: Some vendors may need to make adjustments, not disable features
- Mike: There is currently no way to use IBIS-IS with IBIS
- Vendors have no specific implementation to sign up for
- Could IBIS-IS be the 4th language for [External Circuit]?
- Arpad: We were unable to make HSPICE the 4th language previously
- It has too much proprietary content
- But IBIS-IS can be the 4th language because it is a subset
- We decided not to have a formal "signup sheet" denoting IBIS-IS support
Arpad: We left some topics TBD
- Items like:
- Dropping options like PARHIER
- Functions
- Ternary operator
- Library integrity
- There was no final decision on these
- These need to be resolved before we take it to the Open Forum
- We need to have final decisions on these before moving on
- Bob: If we allow many options people will need a real HSPICE license
Arpad: Should we eliminate all references to HSPICE?
- We should because we want an independent specification
- Mike: Synopsys may want that anyway
- Bob: We could replace it with IBIS-IS
- Mike: Is IBIS-IS the official name?
- Arpad: Walter wanted "subcircuit" in the name somehow
- Bob: IBIS-IS seems like a good name
- We decided to replace HSPICE references with our own name
Arpad: We need to decide on a character set
- Bob: Some tools will have to translate from one spice to another
- Arpad: We should keep what HSPICE does
- For example, some names have minus signs
- Bob: Customers often have to deal with these problems
- Mike: The minus sign restriction was only in some certain place
- We don't have the IBIS-IS open right now
- Arpad: Minus means something different in an expression vs. a name
- A well designed syntax will not have issues with this
- Arpad showed the IBIS-IS page on special characters
- Arpad: The rules here seem to make sense, causing no conflicts
- Mike: Other simulators can simply translate to other characters as needed
- We decided to keep the HSPICE special character table as it stands
Next meeting: 16 June 2009 12:00pm PT
--------
IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
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