[sv-cc] SV-CC Meeting minutes for 05/10/2006

Minutes of 05/10/2006 SV-CC Meeting.

ATTENDEES
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xxxxxxxxxxxxx Charles Dawson
x-xxxxxxx-xxx Ankur Kuchlous
xxxxxxxxxxxxx Ralph Duncan
xxxxxxxxxxxxx Jim Vellenga
-xxxxxxxxxxxx Steven Dovich
-xx-xxxxxx-xx Andrzej Litwiniuk
xxxxxxxxxx-xx Abigail Moorhouse
xxxxxxxx-xxxx Michael Rohleder
xxxxxxxxx---- Ghassan Khoory
xxxxx-------- Chuck Berking
xxxxx-------- Bassam Tabbara
xxxx--xxx---x Francoise Martinolle
xx----------- Amit Kohli
-----------x- Nasim Hussain
------------x Sachchidananda Patel
-x--x-------- Stu Sutherland


1.  Reviewed Patent information.

   - Chas reviewed the patent information.

2.  Reviewed minutes of the 04/26/2006 Meeting.

   Ralph/Francoise.  ACCEPTED


3.  Liaisons

   - Chas to report on P1800 meeting.
     The meeting was suspended because the PAR had some issues.
     They are also working on funding for an editor.

   - Francoise to report on PASSED SV-BC items
     - Ralph brought up Item 1447
       Trying to solve issues with sized and unsized packed dimensions.
       Should think of them as an array of pointers. Only allocate one
       dimension at a time.  Shalom and Doug are discussing still.
       Ralph and Doug are writing more material.

   - No one reported on other meetings


4.  New business

   - ITC issue

     Ralph has discussed this issue with John Stickley.

     Proposal made by Ralph was generally accepted. The motivation for
     the change is to clarify the correct/expected behavior of DPI in the
     context of SystemVerilog and C.

     A few suggestions from Amit, Francoise, Michael, and Jim were made
     which Ralph will try to incorporate into the proposal.
     The discussions were as follows:

       a.  The current proposal mentions the behavior of invoking DPI scope
           utilities from non context import functions/tasks as undefined.
           The proposal still does not mention the behavior as undefined on
           invoking export functions/tasks from non context import
           tasks/functions. This should be mentioned explicitly
           in the proposal. Ralph agreed to this.

       b.  A DPI call chain has been defined as an un-interrupted sequence
           of invocations of functions starting from a call to DPI-C import
           function declared with the context keyword.

           Interpretation:  Any other mechanism which does not follow a
           continuous execution of functions will have an undefined behavior.
           The vendors have flexibility to extend the invocation of export
           functions.
           Suggestion: The dependence on the keyword DPI-C should be removed
           in the text.  The requirement here is for the keyword context, which
           is independent of the keyword DPI/DPI-C.  Ralph agreed to this.

       c.  There was a general discussion around the compatibility of DPI and
           DPI-C import functions, when one called another without going through
           the SV design.  This was to be determined unrelated to the Mantis item
           being discussed.

     The committee will resume discussion on Mantis item 1456 in the next meeting.

   - Francoise brought up Assignment patterns issues.

     Current access is very inefficient.
     Bassam was concerned about proposal to remove vpiStructPattern and
     trying to flatten.  Francoise thinks it does not represent anything.
     Was intended to represent patterns that exist in case pattern matching
     but those can be represented as expressions.

     Bassam was concerned about having two patterns with the same name
     packed union with two structs with same members.  Can you still tell
     them apart?  Francoise: have to use a tag.  Francoise will take a look
     and send back a response.

     Francoise will put together a proposal.  Can also concern packed vectors.
     Chas will add to new business for next time.

5.  Reviewed of items with proposals.

   - Item 1431 Type 'chandle' was overlooked in sv_vpi_user.h
     Francoise/Bassam. PASSED (unanimous)

6.  Review SV-CC items with proposals (Straw poll only):

   - Item 1456 Clarify, circumscribe restrictions on use of DPI context utilities
     Not ready to vote on this one.  Let Ralph and Francoise and Amit finish
     discussing issues with context.


Motion to adjourn.  1:03pm.  JimV/Abi.  PASSED (unanimous)

7.  Old Business

   - JimV to look into other things which can have size changes as discussed in 0985.
     One thing he found was vpiStringVar.  Hasn't finished writeup.

8.  Action items

   - JimV to look into other things which can have size changes as discussed in 0985.
   - Chas to send everyone the frame docs for the diagrams.
   - Chuck to write a document that describes the possible solutions for the
     compatibility issues, and they're pros and cons.
   - Francoise and Bassam to continue work on assignment patterns.

9.  Items for consideration at the next meeting (they already have proposals):

   - None

10. Next meeting
   The next SV-CC meeting will be on 05/24/2006.
   The last P1800 meeting will continue on 05/23/2006.

--
Charles Dawson
Senior Engineering Manager
NC-Verilog Team
Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
270 Billerica Road
Chelmsford, MA  01824
(978) 262 - 6273
chas@cadence.com