Subject: IBIS 1/7/94 Meeting Minutes

From: Derrick Duehren <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 15:23:24 PST

Text item: Text_1

 Date:     January 14, 1994
     
 From:     Derrick Duehren  (503) 696-4299, fax (503) 696-4904
           Third Party Vendor Program Manager
           Xceleration Tools Group
           (Will Hobb's IBIS Assistant)
           Intel Corporation
           Hillsboro, Oregon
     
           and
           Will Hobbs (503) 696-4369,  fax (503) 696-4210 
           Intel Modeling Manager
     
 Subject:  Minutes from IBIS Open Forum 1/7/94
     
 To:
 Anacad                        Petra Osterman 
 AnSoft                        Henri Maramis* 
 Atmel Corporation             Dan Terry
 Cadence Design                Sandeep Khanna, Chris Reed,
                               Pawel Chadzynski*, Kumar*
 Contec                        Maah Sango*, Dermott Lynch, 
                               Clark Cochran
 High Design Technology        Michael Smith
 HyperLynx                     Steve Kaufer, Kellee Crisafulli* 
 Integrity Engineering         Greg Doyle, Wayne Olhoft
 Intel Corporation             Stephen Peters*, Don Telian, Will Hobbs*
                               Arpad Muranyi, Derrick Duehren*
 Interconnectix, Inc.          Bob Ross*
 Intergraph                    Ian Dodd*, David Wiens* 
 IntuSoft                      Charles Hymowitz
 Logic Modeling Corp.          Randy Harr
 Mentor Graphics               Greg Seltzer, Ravender Goyal* 
 Meta-Software                 Stephen Fenstermaker, Mei Wong* MicroSim
                               Arthur Wong, Jerry Brown, Graham Bell
 North Carolina State U.       Paul Franzon, Michael Steer 
 Performance Signal Integrity  Vivek Raghawan, Eric Bracken* 
 Quad Design                   Jon Powell*
 Quantic Labs                  Mike Ventham, Zhen Mu
 Siemens Nixdorf               Werner Rissiek, Ulas Rethneier* 
 Texas Instruments             Bob Ward*
 Thomson-CSF/SCTF              Jean Lebrun
 Zeelan Technology             Hiro Moriyasu, George Opsahl, 
                               Samie Samaan,Tay Wu
     
 CC:
 Intel Corporation             Randy Wilhelm, Jerry Budelman,
                               Intel IBIS team
     
 In the list above, attendees at the 1/7/94 meeting are indicated by *
     
 Next Meeting:       January 28, 1994, 8:15 AM to 10:00 PST. 
 *PLEASE NOTE THE    The Phone number, reservation number, and
 NEW TIME*           agenda will be sent out in the week of Jan. 17.
     
 Please note:  If you know of someone new who wants to join the e-mail 
 reflector ([email-masked]), or have updates to your e-mail address, e-mail 
 to [email-masked].
     
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
     
 Meeting Agenda
 --------------
     
 In keeping with the wishes of various participants, Will has arranged the 
 order to keep technical discussions later so that those who wish to leave 
 early may do so.
     
 9:00     Check-in
 9:05     Introductions of new IBIS members 
 9:10     12/3 Summit Minutes Review
          Opens for New Issues
 9:15     Another IBIS Press Release                Hobbs
          Enlisting new IC Vendors
          Forms of EDA support of IBIS              Hobbs
 9:30     BIRD 5.2, Pin Mapping                     Bracken
          EGG 1, mutual pin coupling                Bracken
 10:00    80 Column restriction?
          Non-intrusive pkg param extraction        Ward 
          Formal BNF notation                       Reed, Harr 
          VIH, VIL Thresholds for Inputs, BIRD 2    Powell 
          Spice to IBIS Converter
 10:30    IBIS 2.0 Goals                            Hobbs
          3D Modeling                               Muranyi 
          New model_types (r-packs, etc.)
          Modeling Feedback                         Hobbs, Peters
 10:45    Phased turn-on/off of multiple devices    Powell
          Open Side Devices                         Crisafulli 
          Other Updates (U of NC, DIE, etc.)        All
 10:55    Wrap-up, Next Meeting Plans

 Minutes
 -------
     
 1.  New members, 11/12 Minutes review, Open time for new issues:
     There were no new members to announce and no corrections were made to 
     last month's minutes.
     
     FYI, Paul Munsey was finally been paid by all the vendors who 
     contracted him to do the IBIS parser.
     
     A/R: Everyone.  Please use spaces instead of tabs in email.  Tabs do 
     not display well for some recipients.
     
 2.  Another IBIS Press Release
     Will Hobbs and Derrick Duehren are working on Intel-driven press 
     release.  No results yet.  
     
     There have been several articles featuring IBIS.  The most significant 
     was 12/8/93 EDN article which named IBIS as one of the hot 100 products 
     of 1993.  A half-page feature article on IBIS appeared in the 12/16/93 
     Electronic Design magazine(Pg. 36).  There was some concern that this 
     was a Cadence announcement, not an IBIS open-forum announcement.  
     Inquiries were to be directed to Karen 
     Kirkpatrick at Cadence.  The consensus of the forum is that this is 
     acceptable as long as Cadence shares customer IBIS inquiries with IBIS 
     members.  Pawel Chadzynski joined the meeting to tell us that they 
     had received only two inquiries from the article.
     
     A Cadence press release was printed in EDN 11/25/93, IBIS was 
     mentioned.
     
     A Japanese-language magazine printed an article featuring IBIS (one    
     paragraph in Technology News, a Nikkei Electronics publication). 
     Cadence and Mentor tools are discussed with Pentium(TM) processor 
     models from Intel and PowerPC models from Motorola/IBM.
     
     A/R: Kumar to get IBIS contact clarified from Cadence.  Cadence needs 
     to pass on customer inquiries, esp. semiconductor vendors, from the 
     EDN article to other IBIS companies.
     
     The IBIS Overview doc is in vhdl.org and available through FaxBack 
     through Intel customer Support.  Past IBIS minutes are also on 
     vhdl.org.  
     
     A/R: Derrick Duehren convert it to RTF and submit.
     
 3.  Enlisting new IC Vendors
     Jon Powell is talking to National Semiconductor.  He is working with  
     them to get models in IBIS format.  Jon is planning to assist Motorola 
     in creating IBIS models for the PowerPC next month.
     
     Will Hobbs read off the list of companies that requested IBIS 
     information since the last meeting.  17 total, including 10 IC 
     vendors:
     
     AT&T               Cypress
     Thompson SCF       Unicad (Bell Northern) 
     IBM                Motorola
     Micron             National Semiconductor 
     Sun                Network Systems
     Thomatronik        Rambus
     Texas Instruments  Tandem Computers
     EMC corp.          Loral Federal Systems (Radhard - space exploration)
     
     Someone said they would follow up with Cypress. (Kellee?)
     
     Bob Ward wanted to know who at TI requested the IBIS information.
     
     A/R: Will Hobbs to get the name to Bob. Done

 4.  Forms of EDA support of IBIS
     As of 1/7, Kellee was the only respondent so far to the request in 
     last month's minutes.  Will is still soliciting your descriptions of 
     how each simulator vendor supports IBIS, which I will pass on to 
     customers and the IBIS Open Forum, if you wish.
     
     Update:  Since the meeting, we have received input from Intusoft and 
     Interconnectix.
     
     Interconnectix:  Bob Ross says that the Interconnectix product will be 
     able to read IBIS Version 1.1 models directly (NATIVE MODE).  The 
     product will be able to read a text file composed of a library 
     of IBIS models.
     
     Intusoft:  Charles Hymowitz says that Intusoft takes a customer's 
     netlist or model and translates it into a spice model, free of charge. 
     They have the golden parser source but haven't, as of yet, automated 
     the process.  They're waiting until there are more IBIS models 
     available.
     
     A/R: Derrick to send separate email request.
     
 5.  BIRD 5.2, Pin Mapping for Ground Bounce Simulation
     After a flurry of reflector discussion on this BIRD in early December, 
     the email discussion died down in the last few weeks.  Eric Bracken 
     gave a summary of the major issues of the BIRD and the 
     differences between 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2.  After a short discussion, 
     attendees agreed that all issues had been ironed out on reflector.  
     Upon vote, it was unanimously approved.

 6.  Egg 1, mutual pin coupling
     Technical discussion of this Egg in IBIS 2.0 ensued.  EGG 1 (Eric 
     Bracken coined the term, reasoning that an EGG precedes a BIRD, so an 
     early discussion that may lead to a BIRD should be called an EGG) 
     dealt with mutual coupling between signals in the package.  Although 
     orthogonal to the pin mapping question (BIRD 5.2), it is related.  
     Eric's suggestion is to add an optional keyword and table 
     to IBIS that specifies mutual coupling.  Quoting the original mail 
     from Eric:
     
     [Mutuals]  Pin1  Pin2  Rmut  Lmut  Cmut
                 1     2     1e-3  1n    1p
                 1     3     1e-4  0.1n  0.1p
     
     Columns "Pin1" and "Pin2" contain numbers of pins which are coupled 
     together; the Rmut, etc. columns specify the values of the couplings.
     
     Not every coupling must be specified (in the interest of sparsity);  
     you can assume that the self-inductances have been specified in the 
     [Pin] section (talk about backward compatibility!)  And it all fits 
     into 80 characters.
     
     Chris Reed of Cadence has offered to write a BIRD on mutuals.  In the 
     meantime, we will continue this discussion on reflector. 
     
 7.  IBIS 2.0 Goals
     When is the right time to close on IBIS V2.0?  Concern was expressed 
     that 1.1 does not support ECL, whereas 2.0 will support ECL, a fairly 
     pressing need, which could drive us to early closure on 2.0.
     
     We need to get more semiconductor vendors on board first.  The fear is 
     that a new major revision to IBIS will scare off new semiconductor 
     vendors, who might perceive that IBIS is an unstable moving target.  
     (Of course, we understand our commitment to backward compatibility and 
     the fact that IBIS as it currently stands is highly functional.)  Jon 
     Powell proposed that we releasing 2.0 when 10 semiconductor vendors 
     come on board or in June, 1994, whichever occurs first. (A 
     semiconductor vendor on board is defined as 'people who say they are 
     developing models').  Several people volunteered to help vendors write 
     there first models.
     
     This plan was agreed to and is now the plan of record.
     
 8.  80 Column restriction?
     The arguments for staying within 80 columns (too many VGA users, email 
     concerns, printers that truncate long lines rather than wrap, 
     potential for errors in models when part of the data may be off the 
     edge of the screen) outweighed those for using longer line lengths.  
     Consensus is that 80-columns is a better common denominator.  General 
     agreement to use 80-col. until a specific insurmountable issue 
     arises that forces us beyond 80 characters per line.
     
 9.  Non-intrusive package parameter extraction
     Bob Ward summarized two papers discussing slow-speed, non-intrusive 
     extraction methods based on TDR (Time Domain Reflectometry).  An 
     engineer at TI produced a paper discussing immersion of components in 
     ultra-pure de-ionized water.  Pure water is non-conductive, but has a  
     very dielectric constant (~38), slowing down the signals so they can 
     be measured.  The measurements have to be taken very quickly because 
     the de-ionized water quickly becomes contaminated by the component and 
     the container.
     
     Bob Canright of Convex did a paper on a related subject.
     
     A/R: Bob Ward put both papers on reflector (with given permissions).  
     Bob may also conduct some of his own tests.
     
     Will Hobbs mentioned that at the Summit, Jon Powell talked about 
     creating AC V/I curves.  Jon said this idea didn't apply to 
     non-intrusive package parameter extraction because the method is used 
     to infer package parameters when customers already know full buffer 
     characteristics.  The ones who are in a position to apply this method 
     already have access to this information.
     
 10. Formal BNF notation
     We needed Randy Harr and Chris Reed for this discussion.  They were 
     not in the meeting.  Bob Ward summarized that lex (scan) and yacc 
     (parse) UNIX utilities can be used to parse IBIS files if a formal 
     BNF exists for IBIS.  Randy has done a preliminary BNF for IBIS, but 
     it needs to be completed.  We will continue this discussion over the 
     reflector.
     
 11. VIH, VIL Thresholds for Inputs, BIRD 2
     Jon is in crunch mode for a major release.  He won't be able to 
     address this issue until the end of the month, at which time he will 
     put together BIRD 2 and post it.
     
 12. Spice to IBIS Converter
     We need someone to do this converter development.  U of NC is 
     reportedly doing this work under their ARPA (Gov't) funding.  This 
     triggered discussion about analog simulation (Spice).  We need 
     conversions from any analog simulator, which would require a standard 
     format for the output, such as V/I pairs.  There is also the problem 
     that some simulators just generate wave forms, not tabular data.
     
     Quad Design has a utility that converts ASCII V/T V/I data into Quad 
     design models successfully.  Theoretically, the utility could also 
     generate IBIS models.
     
     We discussed the need for a cookbook on how to generate and validate 
     the IBIS data properly.  This is where guidance is badly needed, 
     specifications are needed.
     
     A cookbook is in process for use within Intel.  The cookbook discusses 
     how to generate data from both simulation and measurement, and how to 
     validate the models.  Although the document contains Intel proprietary 
     information, large sections could be used publicly.  Will Hobbs has 
     major sections in process, but they won't be ready for at least a 
     month.  We took a $5K SWAG at contractor-writer effort to complete the 
     cookbook.  Jon Powell proposed checking within organizations to see if 
     funding is available.  
     
     Many requested to be in the review cycle before publishing.
     
     A/R: Derrick to do cost estimate for the next meeting.
     
 13. Dues?
     The discussion on hiring a technical writer triggered a discussion on 
     how to fund such an effort.  Do we need an annual dues?  Some ideas 
     were tossed about: 
        Voting members pay dues?
        Cost figured by # of employees?
        Corp./individual memberships?
        Free for Universities?  
    The discussion was tabled.  We will continue the discussion on 
    reflector and in the next meeting.
     
    A/R: Each person to talk with their management/finance people about 
    funding/dues/comfortable contribution levels.
     
 14. 3D Modeling
     Arpad Muranyi had hoped to issues a BIRD on this subject but hasn't 
     gotten to it yet.  He did, however, initiate a discussion on the 
     topic.
     
     Can we make an assumption that each I/V/T curve is a scaleable curve?
     
     In Arpad's present 3D modeling approach, there are two current curves 
     and four time-related curves, six curves total.  A scaling function is 
     used to interpolate between the 2D curves to generate the surface 
     (family of V/T curves).  Arpad has done some work with this and gotten 
     good results with simple devices.  We felt that this simple approach 
     will probably work for standard CMOS, but will likely fall apart for 
     bi-polar devices.
     
     Bob Ward said TI has experience with extremely short channel lengths 
     and are seeing unexpected results, so simple CMOS scaling may fall 
     apart under these conditions.
     
     We recognized that a fair amount of R&D is required to further 
     understand this issue.  This could be a great opportunity to get a 
     University involved.  Simple scaling may be sufficient for now.
     
     A/R: Cadence, Intel, and a third company (Quad Design ?) [sorry, my 
     notes are unclear.  I was prying my laptop open with my Swiss army 
     knife during this discussion...] volunteered to work to get someone 
     from the U of NC to participate in these Open Forums.  Can they do 
     some of this work?
     
 15. New model_types (r-packs, etc.)
     When are input thresholds mandatory and when not?  Jon had previously 
     brought this up and offered to roll it into BIRD 2.1 as soon as he 
     gets off his release crunch.
     
 16. Modeling Feedback
     No worthy feedback yet.  Both TI and Intel have a stake in this but 
     can't share the data because of real-world propriety issues.
     
 17. Phased turn-on/off of multiple devices
     Jon will address this following his BIRD 2.1 work.  He will propose 
     including it in 2.1.  He should be able to get to this in March.
     
 18. Open Side Devices
     No discussion.  Kellee had left the meeting before this topic was 
     addressed.
     
 19. Other Updates (U of NC, DIE, etc.)
     Regarding Ravender's mail on extremely high frequencies, much 
     reflector activity is currently underway on this topic.  Will Hobbs 
     pointed out that frequency dependence is a significant layout issue.  
     Transmission lines have a built-in frequency-dependent impedance due 
     to skin effect.  Will said that some Intel engineers had been 
     struggling with this and felt that current simulation tools didn't 
     handle this.  There was general disagreement among attendees about 
     this.  Jon Powell said "Look up "skin effect" in the manual.  Most 
     felt that this is a non issue.
     
     There is still an open issue of package parameters.  Is it time to go 
     to transmission line representation?  This issue needs further study.
     
 20. Wrap-up, Next Meeting Plans
     
     New business:  The group agreed to move the meeting time to 8:15 am to 
     10:00 am. PMT
     
     Next meeting: 1/28/94