Subject: Spice2ibis

From: Bob Ward <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1993 13:04:43 -0600

Ibis folks!

  This is in specific reply to Kellee's letter, but it is applicable to the
whole group.  As part of selling the concept of ibis around here, I find that
I have to come up with just such a conversion as Spice to ibis and / or real
live measurements to ibis.  I have been thinking about a program to do just
about what Kellee proposed, specifically making "Spice measured data" into a
data file in much the same form as would be "Lab measured data", such as from
a nest of GPIB controlled instruments for instance, so that a common back end
formatter could be written to convert either one to ibis format.

  As I am envisioning it there would be a "spice front end", one or more
"instrument front end(s)", an "ibis generating back end", and a user
interface to control all this.  I would not want to be tied to GPIB, I only
use it as one example.  There are several competing lab instrument control
"standards", any of which could be made to work.  In fact if the system be
designed modularly enough, it would just be another module called by the user
interface so that GPIB is used one time, VXI another, and something else
later, all with minimal impact on the code.  Yes I am interested in doing
something like this since I will have to anyway for my own purposes.  In fact
the Spice invocation module should be replaceable, as well, to accommodate
different spice dialects, invocation styles, and measurement capabilities.  I
can even foresee having several dialects of Spice available through the user
interface.

  I have less interest in a consultant at this time, but I am not outrightly
against the idea either.  I think we should have a little proof of concept
experimentation to see what it is we REALLY want the consultant to do before
we engage him, however.

  I had thought that there was a move afoot to standardize a measurement
methodology, at least for "elderly" parts.  If so, that is a prerequisite, in
my mind, for this kind of a program so that we can all make measurements with
some assurance of comparability.  Was there not a BIRD to be issued on this
already?  If not I would like to see one so that we have a written
"requirements document" of sorts for such a measurement methodology.  I would
be interested in contributing to such a document, but cannot take ownership
of it at this time due to time constraints.

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