Minutes of Verilog-AMS committee meeting - 25 June 2009

Date: 25 June 2009

Attendees:
Himyanshu Anand, Freescale
Prabal Bhattacharya, Cadence
Sri Chandra, Freescale
Geoffrey Coram, Analog Devices
Dave Cronauer, Synopsys
Muzaffer Kal, DSPIA
Scott Little, Freescale
Martin O'Leary, Cadence
Marek Mierzwinski, Tiburon
Ian Wilson, Berkeley DA


Notes from the meeting:

The meeting mainly was an update and follow-up discussions on Sri's 
meeting with Karen regarding how we would be able to move forward: 
either work in Accellera or work within IEEE in two parallel activities 
(P1800 integration and ASVA enhancements), tho they have staggered 
release timelines.

* To work under both the aspects (SV-AMS work as well as ASVA 
extensions) within IEEE, Karen mentioned that both these charters need 
to be identified and documented within the PAR initially and should be 
approved by IEEE. There are two specific boards RevCom (standards review 
committee) and NesCom (new standard committee) who will be reviewing and 
approving the PAR. This will enable for both work to happen within IEEE. 
There is a 5-yr period before which the work has to be done. There are 
ways to extend this but ideally IEEE expects the release within 5 years.

* If we target a release with ASVA alone, which does not include SV-AMS 
integration work (which is most likely given the current guess on the 
estimates required) the PAR needs to be amended just before ASVA release 
and get approved. This will enable Verilog-AMS release with enhancements 
done for supporting ASVA only. Once released, we need to (once again) 
amend the PAR again to specify SV-AMS integration work and continue work 
on that. I hope I have captured what Karen mentioned in my discussions. 
What this means is, there might be a (roughly) 6-month break in the work 
for the SV-AMS integration (between the two amendments of the PAR). I 
hope i understood all this correctly - seems quiet complicated :)

* IF there is a need to release an bug-fix version of ASVA after its 
initial release Karen suggested we could release errata page allowed 
within IEEE process without need to update the PAR or any other process.

* The feedback from the committee discussion suggests that there does 
not seem to be strong reason to move to IEEE (with such a complicated 
process) until ASVA enhancements are done. With regards to working on 
SV-AMS integration with Accellera, Karen suggested that Accellera will 
get approval from IEEE to be able to work on P1800 and this integration 
project (if this path was chosen). This is similar to P1365 integration 
activity done within Accellera.

* On the point of getting close alignment with IEEE P1800 standard 
working groups/sub-committees if the work is done within IEEE, Martin 
commented that this may not necessarily be the case. The effort required 
to work with P1800 for any enhancements/integration will be same whether 
AMS work is done in Accellera or as P1800 dot standard. It depends 
completely on the AMS committee members having bandwidth to participate 
in P1800 sub-committees.

* At this point, this seems to be the simplest solution forward (to keep 
things within Accellera until we have ASVA released) and also results in 
no-gap in SV-AMS integration work. Once again, even within Accellera, 
the Verilog-AMS committee will be working on both threads in parallel 
(SV-AMS and ASVA extensions). The SV-AMS work will not be included when 
we release ASVA. Once we do that release, the option is to donate this 
standard along with whatever work has happened in SV-AMS to IEEE and get 
the PAR approved.

* There was a query from Scott with regards to P1800 enhancements and 
whether there will be a separate dot-release of this standard to support 
ASVA, I need to discuss this further. Martin suggested that these 
enhancements (extensions to P1800) can be included as part of the 
Verilog-AMS standard if feasible.

* There is a followup meeting with Victor from IEEE (he was not 
available for the previous meeting with Karen) during the week of 6/29.

* Mantis items were not discussed. This will be taken up from the next 
committee meeting onwards.

Regards,
Sri


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