SV-BC Meeting Date: Monday, November 8, 2010 Time: 9:00am-11:00am PST Toll Free Dial In Number in North America: 1-888-813-5316 Caller Paid Dial In Number: 1-650-584-6338 Meeting ID: 7839818 02213101 Day 85730629 11000000 Month 10998887 11111111 Year 00000000 aaaaaa-a Matt Maidment - Intel aaaa-aaa Brad Pierce - Synopsys aaaaaaaa Mark Hartoog - Synopsys aaaaa-aa Dave Rich - Mentor Graphics aaaaaaaa Gordon Vreugdenhil - Mentor Graphics aaa-aa-a Alex Gran - Mentor Graphics a--a--aa Heath Chambers - Consultant/Trainer aaaaaa-a Tom Alsop - Intel ---aaaaa Cliff Cummings - Sunburst Design aaaaaaaa Shalom Bresticker - Intel aa---aaa Don Mills - LCDM Engineering -aaaaaaa Arnab Saha - Mentor Graphics -a-aa-aa Daniel Schostak - ARM aaaa--aa Kaiming Ho - Fraunhofer Institute a-aaaaa- Steven Sharp - Cadence aa-aaaaa Francoise Martinolle - Cadence aa-aa-aa Eric Coffin - Mentor Graphics -------- David Gates - AMD a-aaa--a Peter Flake - Elda Technology -------- Scott Little - Freescale -------- John Havlicek - Freescale -------- Rishiyur Nikhil - BlueSpec ---a---a Jonathan Bromley - Verilab ------a- Greg Jaxon - Synopsys aaaa---- Linc Jepson - 74ze Agenda + Review IEEE patent policy http://standards.ieee.org/board/pat/pat-slideset.ppt Reviewed. + Previous Meeting Minutes http://www.eda.org/sv-bc/minutes/sv-bc_10_10_25.txt Dave moves to accept. Shalom seconds. No opposed. Abstain: Heath (did not attend) Motion passes. + Mantis 2948 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2948) Shalom moves to accept the proposal. Gordon seconds. No opposed. No abstain. Motion passes. + Mantis 2395 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2395) AI: Matt to include 2395 in email vote. + Mantis 2107 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2107) Dave moves to be resolved in 1800-2009 standard. Gordon seconds. No opposed. No abstain. Motion passes. + Mantis 2889 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2889) Gordon asks that this sentence be changed from: "Subsequent port declarations may inherit..." to: "Subsequent port declarations shall inherit..." or similar. AI: Shalom to update proposal for 2889 + Mantis 3230 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=3230) Shalom moves to accept the proposal. Dave seconds. No opposed. No abstain. Motion passes. + Mantis 2929 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2929) Shalom asked for feedback that would prevent making ANSI and non-ANSI port declarations consistent for this matter. Steven does not see any reason to not fix this. AI: Shalom to add proposal for 2929 + Mantis 2310 (http://www.eda.org/svdb/view.php?id=2310) Has anyone had a chance to consider Wilson's feedback regarding a pre-processor? http://www.eda.org/sv-bc/hm/10643.html http://www.eda.org/sv-bc/hm/10645.html Eric: Wilson's implemenation pulls in all matters of pre-processing, not just macros. Could complicate the discussion. Would like to focus on macros (`define, `", escaped identifiers and the compostion of macros). Other aspects of the pre-processor are not controversial. Francoise: What about categorizing the related issues to help bring focus? Steven: Because features are inter-related and having some reference to help understand the impact of changes would help. Gord: Seeing issues where "features" of an implementation are artifacts of the implementation. Tools disagree on what tools identify as text and tokens. Difficult to express in English. Brad asked about test cases for such an implementation to establish defined behavior. Gord suggests that community would provide them. Brad asked how an issue would be resolved: whether the test cases or implementation would change. Gord/Steven: Group would review and respond that either the test case or implementation would be updated. Gord not interested in formulating a suite of acceptance tests to fully qualify an example implementation. Gord is interested in capturing test cases that helped in making decisions about the implementation/standard. Anything in the IEEE standard will be problematic to share due to copyright issues. SV-BC is concerned about adopting an executable specification and test suite. Dave asked about what happens when DPI and VPI header files. Gord suggested that these are also problematic. Gord suggests that this effort would look like the scheduling algorithm. There would be something like pseudo-code, state diagram or other mechanism for capturing the pre-processor behavior. Gord and Eric believe that creating a new implementation of macro processor would take as much time as reusing, understanding, controlling Wilson's. Believe implementation would need to be very deliberate in its work to realize the specified algorithm. AI: Matt ask 1800 WG about proposal to have an implementation available to help reason about pre-processor. + Interface Proposals Discuss the thread started by Peter: http://www.eda.org/sv-bc/hm/10638.html Francoise concerned about item C. Gord strongly against item C. Steven strongly against item C. Gord: Design unit definitions are not required to be ordered. If source ordering was applied interfaces, it may help resolve C. Mark: Interface port does not have a type. Interface is not a type. Gord: Believes much confusion about interfaces is because of confusion about what an interface is (design unit and/or type). Mark: If parameters could be specified with interface ports then this would potentially alleviate need for generic interface ports. Steven: parameterized interfaces may also help synthesis flows to not required a top-down flow to determine interface specifics. Allow users to have virtual interfaces that can point to interfaces that have interface ports, assuming interfaces's interface port is fully specified (parameterization gives flexibility). Gord: May help implementations to realize more consitent results. Users incur burden of additional specification to gain access to interfaces with interface ports. Kaiming: Design can only tolerate interfaces of certain specializations, so Peter's item A is beneficial. Otherwise, it's achieved using assertions to catch undesired interfaces. Gord: Would like to see interfaces in packages. Kaiming: What about modports in packages? Gord: This could go either way. Had discussions with Jonathan about this. Steven: In order to use modports for multiple interfaces would need to make them parameterizable. Prefer thinking of them as interfaces within interfaces. Gord: What about static forms of classes that can be synthesizable? Brad: Sounds like a good idea. Steven: What about extending interfaces to be more like classes? Gord: What about pushing interfaces as abstract ports and using classes to connect testbench to design. Can we decide which direction is more promising: interfaces to become more like classes? classes extended to include some of the key features of interfaces. Before that: Need to decide that there is sufficient agreement about going into the interpreted domain (like item C in Peter's list). 11:01 Steven moves to adjourn. + Progress/Discussion for Top 10 Looking for proposal sketches or discussion for any of these issues. 696 - Champion: Tom 2310(1084, 1201) - Participants: Eric, Tom, Shalom, Steven, Wilson Snyder 3053 - Participants: Francoise, Mark, Alex, Kaiming 3055 - Participants: Gord, Mark 2991 - Champion: Tom, Participants: Steven 1566 - For future discussion 2114 - Similar to 3053. Have same group look at it. 210 - Participants: Shalom, Matt 3056 - Champion: Shalom, Participants: Steven, Francoise Action Items Complete 10/25/10 Tom update proposal for 696 per friendly amendment. Outstanding 05/10/10 Matt create Master Issue for WG-approved SV-BC Top-25 07/19/10 Matt follow-up about voting rules for technical sub-committee. Is there a limit on the number of reps from 1 entity? 07/19/10 Dave to post request to reflectors for clarification of 2108 07/19/10 Jonathan post some items for discussion related to 2114 to reflector. 08/02/10 Brad give SV-BC feedback on Mantis 2992 to Mehdi 08/02/10 Eric start reflector thread on Mantis 2310 08/02/10 Gord meet F2F with Mark when in Bay Area 08/16/10 Brad update Mantis items passed by email vote. 08/16/10 Matt to rethink 210 in terms of configuration and alias. 08/16/20 All send Shalom feedback about prioritizing the issues raised in port declaration issue summary: http://www.eda.org/sv-bc/hm/10498.html 09/13/10 Jonathan show simple examples of virtual interfaces, sub-interfaces and base classes in modules to demonstrate different methods for connecting design and testbenches. 09/27/10 Tom post updated proposal to 696. 09/27/10 Review Shalom's list of interface issues and suggest issues to tackle now. 11/08/10 Matt to include 2395 in email vote. 11/08/10 Shalom to update proposal for 2889 11/08/10 Shalom to add proposal for 2929 11/08/10 Matt ask 1800 WG about proposal to have an implementation available to help reason about pre-processor.