Verilog-AMS technical committee meeting minutes - 18 March 2010

Date: 18th March 2010, 2pm pacific time

Attendees:
Haydar Bilhan, TI
Kevin Cameron, Consultant
Sri Chandra, Freescale
Geoffrey Coram, Analog Devices
Dave Cronauer, Synopsys
Jonathan David, Qualcomm
Tapan Halder, Synopsys
Marq Kole, NXP
Kishore, Cadence
Stan Krolikoski, Cadence
Top Lertpanyavit, Intel
David Miller, Freescale
Patrick O'Halloran, Tiburon
Martin O'Leary, Cadence
Arturo Salz, Synopsys
David Sheritt, Tiburon
Yatin Trivedi, Synopsys
Boris Troyanovsky, Tiburon
Ian Wilson, Berkeley DA

Minutes:

Focus of today's discussion was for committee members to clarify any
issues with Cadence with regards to the wreal extensions proposal donation
   - Voting to be done by Accellera members and active (1-in-3 meetings)

* Yatin raised a point on what we are voting on, and given that there is
only one donation in response to the donation window being opened by
Accellera what does the vote signify
   - As part of the donation, Cadence will also provide patent licensing
used in the donation to Accellera, and Cadence will not enforce any
patent claims for users of this donation.
   - If the donation is accepted through vote, there is no conditions or
restrictions - the donation can be accepted fully, in parts, modified or
even not included when it comes to inclusion in the actual LRM.
   - If the vote is a "No", the licensing of the patents will be
transferred back to Cadence.
   - Cadence signed letter of assurance that no further patenting will
be done. Implementors have same patent protection

* Ian Wilson wanted to know whether it was mandatory to use all, or any
part of the donation.
   - Cadence (Stan) clarified that this is not mandatory. The technical
committee will go through the regular process of review - the contents
can be accepted as-is, modified, partly accepted or completed not
included in the standard as part of the technical committee review process.

* Marq Kole wanted to know the active patents involved in this donation
   - there are no active patents, but there are pending patents based on
this proposal that is being donated. The patent id details are mentioned
in letter of assurance submitted to Accellera.
   - The committee has the freedom to chose to use this donation or not.

* Kevin raised the issue of followup from previous meeting where the
proposal was presented with regards to the actual requirement that this
donation is addressing
   - supports wreal2electrical, enables model swapping, plug-and-play
(electrical and wreal)
   - with regards to not being deprecated, Martin responded that this
was discussed as part of LRM2.3 deliberations and closed
   - deprecation proposed is in the syntax and not on the semantics
   - Also, SV does not have the capability that is being discussed.
Today this is also a gap in SV.

* Marq Kole (NXP) and Jonathan David (Qualcomm) accepted the donation
during the meeting. Kevin rejected the donation proposal sighting that
it does not address the issue.

* Tapan raised the issue of handling multiple drivers, and more
specifically 2-state v 4-state wreal and how backward compatibility will
be maintained
   - the models need to take into account X/Z states
   - this is not addressed in the proposal. Needs to be reesolved
through the working group discussions (if proposal is accepted)

* Tapan raised the issue of handling the disciplines in digital domain
   - for resolution, choice of either pre-defined built-in types or
Kevin suggested the use VHDL like user defined types.
   - Tapan mentioned user-defined types is not ideal for this usage and
preferably have the pre-defined built-in types.
   - Kevin's comment was this will increase number of pre-defined
built-in types once other requirements come into picture (types on wires
for RF modeling)

* Yatin wanted the Letter of Assurance that was sent to Accellera to be
available to the members before going for vote
   - identifies clearly contents of LoA and patents submitted etc
   - Stan confirmed that Cadence will post this LoA to the reflector
(after call followup - this letter was sent across and has been hosted
on the eda.org website by Dave Miller)

* Key deadlines
   - The voting on the donation is postponed to 26th of March (1 week
extension) based on request from Synopsys to have look at LoA, before
committing on the vote.
   - The donation window will close on 19th March midnight.

Regards,
Sri

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