IEEE P1076.1 Working Group F2F & Telco Meeting Minutes - March 9, 2010 10am PST (19:00 CET)

Status: approved by WG on April 13, 2010 with modifications (add Joachim Haase as participant).

Attendees

• Ken Bakalar
• Ernst Christen (chair, meeting convener)
• Zhichao Deng
• Joachim Haase
• Tom Kazmierski
• Torsten Mähne
• David Smith
• Alain Vachoux (note taker)

Agenda

• Call to order
• Approval of agenda
• Administrative issues
• WG updates
• IEEE-SA update
• Survey results
• IEEE P1076.1 PAR
• Next steps and next meeting
• AOB
• Adjourn

1. Call to order on March 9, 2010 at 10am PST

Ernst welcomed the participants and started presenting the meeting slides.

2. Approval of Agenda

Motion from Alain. Ken seconded. Agenda unanimously approved without modifications.

3. Administrative Issues

• Minutes of February 9, 2010
  Motion from Ken. Alain seconded. Minutes unanimously approved without modifications.
• Review of IEEE patent policy
  Ernst offered a review of the IEEE patent policy. Participants waived the review.

4. WG Updates

• Publicity (call for priorities and projects)
  Ernst looked at possibilities in various publications (IEEE D&T, Automotive Engineering, EE Times). No much progress yet.
• 1076.1.1 revision
  WG review should start soon.

5. IEEE-SA Update

• Entity membership
  Updated IEEE membership program. Working groups have still the choice to use it or not. P1076.1 WG decided to keep individual based membership. Question remains whether next P1076.1 ballot would need to be entity-based.
• Obligation for participation
  Ernst reported on new IEEE rules effective from March 31, 2010.
• Updated copyright policy
  Ernst reported on new IEEE rules effective from March 31, 2010. This affects all documents in the P1076.1 web site. Ernst will review the existing content, but it is anticipated that there should not be any problem related to copyright issues.

6. Survey Results

19 responses as of February 20, 2010. Table-driven modeling got the highest rank, followed by frequency-domain modeling. Ernst mentioned a good correlation between votes and voters context. Received comments will be published on the web site (the survey call and the survey feedback can be found in the public document page).

[Slide 10: Mixed netlists] David and Ken raised the need to also consider VHDL/Verilog and VHDL/MAST coupling. Ernst replied that this would be useful for defining requirements.

[Slide 12: PDEs] Tom mentioned that the proposal is a fairly general proposal and is OK for interconnects. He also stressed that the existing translator to existing VHDL-AMS code is one possible direction. Torsten asked for support of finite-element modeling, but this may be beyond WG objectives.

[Slide 14: Vector/matrix operations] Tool support is not a WG issue.

[Slide 15: Uniform use of SPICE models] David raised that this is a real challenge as no uniform SPICE syntax is existing. Ernst replied that the idea is more defining a uniform use in VHDL-AMS, e.g. using foreign architectures refering to subcircuits.

[Slide 16: Miscellaneous]
Baseband modeling: Successful attempts but using hacks. Seems to be more a tool issue.
Periodicity and integration: Intent is to support integration with modulo as it is currently available in Verilog-AMS.
Non static ideal delay: Intended for abstract system level modeling.
Calls to impure functions in CEs: Currently only cycle pure functions are allowed.
"Analog postponed processes": Intent is to define some executable code after an analog solution point has been computed. Use could be to report simulation information. Ken stressed the need to only use passive code. Ken also mentioned possible existing proposal.

[Slide 17: Conclusions] David raised the need to get more responses. he suggested to open a new round. Ernst agreed and proposed to write another invitation to tool vendors (Synopsys, Mentor, Ansoft, Dolphin) who can also ask their own customers. Alain will also contact ECSI again.

7. IEEE P1076.1 PAR

Ernst offered to review the draft PAR for P1076.1. Small change in the title. No change in scope. Change in purpose (no more mention of revision, add mention to support new features in the language, but without being specific). Ernst will investigate how far the PAR is concerned with the new IEEE Copyright Policy.

8. Next Steps and Next Meeting

• Publicity: As it is expensive to put adds, other means have to be found.
• P1076.1.1 revision: Targetting the June RevCom meeting is too tight. September meeting is possible.
• P1076.1 revision: Draft PAR to be reviewed by WG.
• Next meeting: Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 8am PST (tentative). Ernst will ask project champions to present first status and plans. Project table still to be completed.

9. AOB

None.

10. Adjourn

Ernst adjourned the meeting at 11:15 PST.