IEEE P1735 Working Group Meeting of January 20, 2014

Meeting Info

Conference Information

Participants

• Attending
  • Dave Graubart, Synopsys DR (Chair)
  • Michael Smith, Synopsys DRA
  • Jonathan Goldberg, IEEE Professional Services
  • Ray Martin, Xilinx DR
  • Jeff Fox, Altera DR
  • Steven Dovich, P1076 liaison
  • Joe Daniels, P1735 Technical Editor
  • John Shields, Mentor DR
  • Dave Clemans, Synopsys DRA
  • Ruchi Tyagi, Cadence DRA
  • Satyam Jani, Aldec DR
• Not Attending
  • Joe Hupcey, Jasper
  • Nitin Khurana, Cadence DR
  • Krista Gluchoski, IEEE Professional Services
  • Dmitry Melnick, Aldec DRA
  • Stan Krolikoski, Cadence (DASC Chair)
  • Devin Sundaram, Altera DRA
  • Parminder Gill, Synopsys DRA
  • Premduth Vidyanandan, Xilinx
  • David Pena, Cadence
  • Bin Dai, Xilinx
  • Gael Paul, PLDA

Agenda

1. Determine Quorum
2. Patent slides
3. Approve agenda
4. Approval of Previous Meeting minutes
5. Introduce any guests
6. Action Item Review
7. Liaison Reports
8. Draft 4 discussion
9. Schedule
10. Front Matter
11. Interoperability
12. Key Management
13. Rights Management
14. License Management and Reference Implementation
15. Visibility
16. Common Rights
17. Annxes
18. Work Plan
19. Other Business
20. Adjourn

Minutes

Attendance/Quorum

We have 6/6 eligible entities, and do have a working quorum.

Patent Policy

The Patent slides were offered for review.

No new claims were disclosed at the call for essential patent claims.

Agenda Approval

John would like time to discuss visibility issues. With this update, motion to approve agenda made by John, seconded Jeff. Motion is approved.

Previous Minutes

John moved and Jeff seconded the approval of the January 6, 2014 minutes. The motion was approved.

Guests

No guests attended today.

Dave G will follow-up with Joe Hupcey from Jasper on a future meeting for him to attend again. Dave will notify the working group in advance so others who may want to interact with Joe can be present.

Dave G mentioned that Gael Paul, a former colleague and the driver behind OpenIP, will be attending a meeting in the near future as an expert guest. OpenIP was the donation from Synplicity to VSIA which then become part of P1735.

Action Item Review

No updates today.

Liaison Reports

No updates today.

Draft 4 Discussion

A preliminary draft 4 was made available to the working group last Wednesday.

Joe asked questions regarding the preliminary draft:

• Section 5.2: should value of version be called a number, integer, or something else? We'll leave it as "value" as the lowest common demoninator between Verilog and VHDL

• Marking content as version 1 vs. version 2 is not complete in draft 4. It will need to be complete in draft 5.

• Need examples and strategies. We are OK for draft 4 but need these for ballot.

• References to Verilog should be replaced with SystemVerilog.

• Term for runtime visibility shoul consistently be runtime_visibility.

• Description of identifiers in the rights managment clause will be more formal in draft 5.

• Question if bibliography nmeeds to include ISO/IEC 8859-1. Yes.

• Suggestion that we add IEEE 802 references. Steve will look for this.

• Schedule is:

  • Jan 22 - Deadline for feedback on preliminary draft 4 to Joe; reviewers to agree that draft 4 is as expected, recognizing additional work will go into draft 5.

  • Jan 24 - Joe will publish updated PDF incorporating review comments.

  • Jan 29 - Final feedback due to Joe on updated PDF.

  • Jan 31 - Final draft 4 done and ready to submit for MEC review.

Steve asked if there is any issue with additional normative references after the MEC review. Jonathan said this shouldn't be an issue but he will double-check. The specific concern is about cross-references to POSIX and machine attributes such as the MAC address.

Schedule

Dave G presented a current schedule.

Assumptions:

1. Joe has 2014 IEEE professional services contract in place. This is done covering Draft 4 and 5 work. An additional contract needs to be in place for recirculation ballot work.

2. Typography standards are clear and match 1076. Steve has these specified in recent front matter updates. 1076 LRM is available on 1735 private Twiki.

Front Matter Status

Steve does not know of further changes that will be needed after draft 4.

Interoperability Status

Ray reports that little will be needed after draft 4.

Key Management Status

Steve does not know of further changes that will be needed after draft 4.

Rights Management Status

Dave G reports that there will be another 10% change after draft 4, mostly related to the markup around key and rights blocks.

License Management Status

Dave G reports that there will be another 10% change after draft 4. Let's assume an additional 10% to cover IEEE 802 references. Dave G expects to have the reference implementation posted in the Accellera forum today or tomorrow.

Visibility Status

John reports that there has been considerable discussion on predefined or disclosed names, name within protected regions that are known to the user through documentation or other means. The current draft allows for visibility of such objects during compilation and elaboration, but not during runtime. DPI, PLI, VPUI, and VHPI may be assuming access to these objects during runtime and this conflicts with P1735 recommendations. We need to be clear about the expected behavior and rationale. Steve mentioned that this was discussed in 1364 for PLI and VPI. John said that the expected behavior is not clear in the 1364 standard or understood by many people. While viewports cover this to some extent in VHDL, there is no equivalent in Verilog. P1735 is trying to cover this in both languages. Dave G asked if John can create a questionairre that we can all circulate to interested colleagues. Dave G also asked to what extent we need to answer these questions in the 2014 version of P1735 given that these questions have existed for some time, as Steve put it, as deficiencies in other standards. The possibility of using a tool-specific right in the short-term did not get much support. John suggested that DPI is the most important and should be prioritized above PLi/VPI/VHPI.

John agreed to post a discussion and questions about these topics this week and suggested we process this topic like other parts of the draft 4 review and that we do our best to resolve this in our 2014 recommendations.

Dave G asked about visibility of parent names in protected parent modules as requested by instantiated modules. John said this is already covered by the child_visibility common right.

Common Rights Status

John reports that there will be another 10% change after draft 4, although it could be affected more if the visibility questions are resolved by new controls given to IP authors.

Annex Status

John reports is stable for draft 4. This is non-normative information and some now appears in clause 9 and 10. Some cleanup is pending after draft 4. John may make updates for draft 5. Annex X, with some material was moved to clause 9 and 10 will become Annex C (John) and this annex may need to contain additional non-normative content from today's discussion. Annex A is bibliography (Steve), Annex B is required algorithms (Dave).

Work Plan

High-level objectives:

• Secure pre-ballot feedback from other DASC working groups (using draft 4)

Project Plan:

• Draft 4
  • Joe D delivered the first of the iteration last week and needs any feedback by tomorrow. Joe asked us to mark up the PDF with comments rather than create new or revised Word documents.
  • Submit final draft 4 for MEC review.
  • Collect feedback sufficient for draft 5 work by the middle of February
• Draft 5
  • Incorporate MEC review comments
  • Incorporate refinements and syntax examples

Other Business

Dave G to update web site, fixing some file permissions and adding John's slides that he (John) did for DAC.

Need commitment for small 2014 assessment from each entity. Any who have not confirmed with Dave G yet, please do so before the end of January.

Dave G needs donation letters for MEC review. Steve will send the Cadence letter to Dave and Joe. The VSIA donation letter is on our Twiki but is not a signed executed copy. Dave G will follow-up with IEEE, Accellera, and Gary Delp to check what letter will be sufficient and if an executed copy can be found. A letter from Synopsys should not be required as its donation to VSIA was completed and Accellera then took ownership of VSIA IP so there was no direct donation from Synopsys to IEEE.

Joe asked Dave for copies of figures used in Rights and License Management clauses.

Next Meeting

The next P1735 meeting is scheduled for February 3, 2014 at 16:00UTC.

Tentative Agenda

1. Determine Quorum
2. Patent slides
3. Approve agenda
4. Approval of Previous Meeting minutes
5. Introduce any guests
6. Action Item Review
7. Liaison Reports
8. Draft 4 discussion
9. Schedule
10. Front Matter
11. Interoperability
12. Key Management
13. Rights Management
14. License Management and Reference Implementation
15. Visibility
16. Common Rights
17. Annxes
18. Work Plan
19. Other Business
20. Adjourn

Adjournment

Motion by John, second by Jeff. Approved by acclamation at 17:28 UTC

Approval

These minutes are approved.

-- DaveGraubart - 2014-01-20