======================================================================
IBIS INTERCONNECT MODELING AD HOC TASK GROUP MEETING MINUTES AND AGENDA
http://www.eda.org/ibis/adhoc/interconnect/
Mailing list: ibis-interconn@freelists.org<mailto:ibis-interconn@freelists.org>
======================================================================
Next Meeting
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
9 AM US Pacific Time
Telephone Bridge Passcode
916-356-2663 5 909-3156
(for international and alternate US numbers, contact Michael Mirmak)
Live Meeting: http://tinyurl.com/yzo768q (CHANGED FROM THE JANUARY 6 MEETING)
or:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/sisoft/join?id=M462B6&role=attend&pw=P9%3D8%3BP%277b
Agenda:
- Attendence
- Call for patents
- Opens
- Binary Format Responses and Questions
- Sparse Matrices Format - Label Syntax
- MCP plans
======================================================================
Minutes from January 6, 2010:
Attendees:
----------
(* denotes present)
Agilent - Radek Biernacki*, John Moore, Ken Wong
Ansoft - Denis Soldo
Cadence Design Systems - Terry Jernberg, Brad Griffin
Green Streak Programs - Lynne Green
Hewlett-Packard - Rob Elliott
IBM - Greg Edlund*
Intel - Michael Mirmak*
Mentor Graphics Corp. - John Angulo, Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov
Micron Technology - Randy Wolff
Sigrity - Sam Chitwood, Raymond Y. Chen, Tao Su, Brad Brim*
SiSoft - Walter Katz*
Teraspeed Consulting Group - Bob Ross*
========================================================================
Michael Mirmak conducted this meeting and Bob Ross is providing the
minutes.
No patents were announced.
Opens - Meeting plans, logistical transistions (while Michael Mirmak
is in Taiwan) and priorities for the next 3 months
Walter Katz introduced the IBM binary format proposal sent out earlier
by Greg Edlund:
--------
Documented in the internal version of HSSCDR is the support to read
in binary format s-parameter files. Binary format touchstone files
as defined by HSSCDR add the statement :
% BINARY DL
% BINARY DB
% BINARY FL
% BINARY FB
% BINARY ML
% BINARY MB
The format specifier convention is as follows :
D : double
F : float
M : double freq, float data
L : little-endian
B : big-endian
Thus DL is double, little-endian.
to indicate binary format, the immediately following data is in binary
instead of ASCII. The above line can be followed by a \n or a \r\n
to indicate newline. Immediately following the newline sequence is
one pad 0 byte which indicates the following data is binary format
numbers.
Binary format files can be generated using the -L[SAVE] command, see
help -L or help chanl for more information. The advantage of binary
format is a savings of about 5x to 6x in file size and much faster
file I/O.
----------
Greg responded to several questions and comments during the meeting.
Most of these dealt with learning about the proposal and whether it
applies to the whole document or to the model data portion. Also
this proposal is not combined with some other possible reduced order
modeling proposals such as a residue-pole format.
Walter and Bob Ross will generate some questions for Greg on a number
of items including whether the binary formatting is for just the data
portion or the whole file, and whether the binary encoding scheme can
be made public. We plan to discuss this at a future meeting.
Regarding priorities, Walter indicated that he favors pursuing the
model connection protocol (MCP) format versus working on a nodal naming
format within Touchstone. The MCP would also apply to SPICE formats
and other formats, so it has wider potential for an integrated model
connection flow. Bob commented that proposals on the MCP has been
presented by Brad Brim or other authors at the last three IBIS Summit
Meetings. There was general concensus that this was worth pursuing in
the Interconnect Task Group.
Bob indicated that we need to finalize the Sparse Matrix syntax
by closing out the final issue regarding label naming rules. This
involves whether labels should be integers or strings. This work
can be set aside (possible with a TSIRD document and link) until we
close out any further additions that might be included in a
Touchstone 2.1 release.
Then we can integrate everything into a Touchstone 2.1 release. This
integration might involve some formatting changes in Touchstone 2.0
to make this addition and future ones easier to manage with less
impact on the overall document.
So, future works includes closing out the Sparse Matrix Format Syntax
to a stable level, continue investigating the binary format, and
also prepare working on a MCP when the proposal being developed
off-line is ready for the Task Group consideration.
The meetings for the next few months will be chaired by Bob, and
Walter will help out with the live meeting and document management
logistics. The focus of any specific meeting might be on a single
topic, and these could alternate from meeting to meeting.