[ibis-macro] Minutes from the 11 Feb 2014 ibis-atm meeting
- From: Mike LaBonte <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ibis-macro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 16:57:12 -0500
Minutes from the 11 Feb 2014 ibis-atm meeting are attached.
Mike
IBIS Macromodel Task Group
Meeting date: 11 February 2014
Members (asterisk for those attending):
Agilent: Fangyi Rao
Radek Biernacki
Altera: * David Banas
ANSYS: * Dan Dvorscak
* Curtis Clark
Luis Armenta
Cadence Design Systems: * Ambrish Varma
* Brad Brim
* Kumar Keshavan
Ken Willis
Ericsson: Anders Ekholm
Intel: Michael Mirmak
Maxim Integrated Products: Hassan Rafat
Mentor Graphics: * John Angulo
* Arpad Muranyi
Micron Technology: Randy Wolff
* Justin Butterfield
QLogic Corp. James Zhou
Andy Joy
SiSoft: * Walter Katz
Todd Westerhoff
* Mike LaBonte
Teraspeed Consulting Group: Scott McMorrow
* Bob Ross
The meeting was led by Arpad Muranyi
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Opens:
- Mike: The attendee list has been pruned to retain only those joining since
Jan 1, 2013.
--------------------------
Call for patent disclosure:
- None
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Review of ARs:
- Walter collect user statements regarding their packaging needs.
- This needs to wait until a combined solution is defined.
- We will consider this AR tabled.
- Brad has asked package vendors for this information.
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New Discussion:
- Arpad: It was suggested that I meet with Walter to resolve issues.
- In fairness all co-authors should be involved, maybe other company members.
- That might lead to having more people than expected.
Back-channel:
- Ambrish showed a proposed back-channel BIRD .
- Markup colors are relative to the last posted version.
- Ambrish: Several sections define bit patterns.
- The AMI file has Training and Backchannel_Protocol Reserved_Parameters.
- The BCI string resembles the other ones passed to/from AMI DLLs.
- It has data for setting TX tap settings.
- Walter: Some protocols will have different methods.
- For example, percent instead of coefficient.
- Ambrish: The TX informs when no more changes can be made, training is done.
- Arpad asked to keep questions and answers short.
- Michael M: Agree with Walter, for example PCIe does it differently.
- They do not increment and decrement.
- Walter: We may need a cookbook to show how to handle various protocols.
- Michael M: How deep will we get into protocol awareness?
- Walter: AMI should be concerned with the channel payload, the TX to RX bits.
- Kumar: We should solve this at the physical layer.
- Walter: I think we agree.
- We should be concerned about adding new types and formats.
- Ambrish: This is cleaner than space delimited strings.
- Arpad: Will this BIRD be submitted to the open forum?
- Ambrish: Yes.
- Mike L: Will this work only between a specific TX and RX?
- Ambrish: It will work with any TX and RX using the same protocol file.
AR: Ambrish send updated backchannel BIRD to Mike for posting.
AR: Ambrish send clean backchannel BIRD to Michael M for open forum.
Package model discussion:
Michael M: We need to pick one of the two proposals that have been made.
- Mike Steinberger noted that we have a choice whether to refactor software
or change incrementally.
- John: Refactor actually means to rewrite existing functionality.
- Michael M: One question is if we should rework a keyword that is not commonly
used.
- Keywords like [External Circuit] raise the expectation of supporting AMS
languages.
- If it can be another name then we might make both proposals work.
- Ambrish: We could create a subparameter to indicate that only ISS can be used.
- Walter: We should pursue unifying our proposals offline.
- A cookbook written in parallel would help.
- John: Mentor has introduced BIRDs, SiSoft has presented a methodology.
- The methodology may not be complete and may be difficult to use.
- It will have to say how both the users and tools will use it.
- Arpad: How will the tool automate this for the user assigning models to
buffers?
- John: We are getting generalized models from vendors.
- They may not say which pins provide worst case coupling.
- Will model choices be made automatic?
- Michael M: The main concern is post-layout?
- John: No, pre-layout is just as important.
- Walter: In prelayout the assignments would be more manual.
- Arpad: How will the tool know how to do the connections?
- John: The IC vendor has not given the information needed.
- Walter: One approach is for the vendor to supply wide models.
- Another is for the EDA tool to derive them, possibly using swathing.
- John: There is much to discuss about how this will work in practice.
- Michael M: It seems only a buffer model and some package info is needed, no
IBIS.
- John: A plug and play solution could be made if we provided victim level
information.
- Michael M: That is easy for the EDA tool, but not the model maker.
- We might be creating a solution that does not require IBIS.
- Arpad: We need to focus on the user.
- There will be more users than model makers.
- Walter: There can be chips with 128 SerDes.
- Users need IBIS files that allow them to analyze that for noise.
- They may find that a model is insufficient, will need a bigger one.
- Touchstone 3 sparse models will help.
- John: Vendors should be willing to create s12p models, for example.
- Brad: It is good that we have been discussion methodology, not a BIRD.
- The problem today is I have models I can't use with IBIS.
- Things are done manually first, before automation.
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Next meeting: 18 February 2014 12:00pm PT
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IBIS Interconnect SPICE Wish List:
1) Simulator directives
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