RE: [P1800] Draft PAR for initial discussion in December 10, 2009 P1800 Meeting

From: Rich, Dave <Dave_Rich_at_.....>
Date: Tue Dec 08 2009 - 14:59:33 PST
I counted 31 Master issues - so the actual number of open issues is 890.
BTW, Mantis has a "tagging" feature that can eliminate the need for all
these master issues.

 

I agree with Brad and Shalom's assessment of the current situation. I do
have a slightly different opinion on the process to resolve the
situation.

 

From the user's perspective (re: users not involved with the committee),
I think there is frustration that SV is still a moving target. In the
1800-2005 LRM, there are still features that no tool has implemented;
and in the 1800-2009 LRM, there are many more features that have yet to
be implemented in any tool. Not to mention even the greater number of
features that only some tools have implemented.

 

Yes, there are way too many outstanding issues, and I don't think anyone
wants to spend the rest of their lifetime resolving them. I also think
most people only want to work on issues they have an interest in, either
personal or company motivated. This is essentially a volunteer
organization. People may work on other issues if it helps the cause of
their key issues.

 

Historically, there has not been enough participation with this standard
to support two parallel efforts. My suggestion is that we open a very
short timeframe to work on an amendment PAR to work on
errata/clarifications of the current standard, which might include
changes to SV, but not entertain new enhancements at this time. How
short, two years - or what ever would be enough to satisfy the
enhancement happy people. (Believe me; I have lots of enhancements ready
to go).

 

Dave Rich

 

 

 

________________________________

From: owner-ieee1800@server.eda.org
[mailto:owner-ieee1800@server.eda.org] On Behalf Of Bresticker, Shalom
Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 7:45 AM
To: Brad Pierce; IEEE 1800
Subject: RE: [P1800] Draft PAR for initial discussion in December 10,
2009 P1800 Meeting

 

Hi, Brad.

 

In Intel, we have had internal discussions, and our DR will present our
official position at the meeting.

 

Here are some personal thoughts that do not necessarily reflect the
official position of Intel.

 

I would distinguish between Errata and Clarifications. 

 

Officially, there are 921 open Mantis items (ignoring those that people
have not yet filed). Of those, approximately 525 are classified as
Errata (although about 2 dozen are probably SV-BC "Master" parent
issues), approximately 210 are Enhancements and 185 Clarifications.
SV-AC + SV-SC have 89 issues, SV-BC+1364 have 551, SV-CC has 126, and
SV-EC has 155 issues open.

 

While some of the errata have no meaning, I think that probably most of
them are worth fixing. On the other hand, with respect to
clarifications, I would like to see us identify and emphasize those
ambiguities that are known to cause tool portability problems in the
real world or are evaluated as likely to do so (most ambiguities on
SV-2009 enhancements are future problems, and not current problems). 

 

So I would like to see each sub-committee identify those items that
should be classified as high priority instead of just working on
whatever someone feels like working on.

 

One process that has worked sometimes in the past (and sometimes not) is
to have a sub-committee make a small group of people to work on a
particular issue by themselves and then bring their work to the entire
sub-committee. That requires the group to have a leader who will drive
the issue to a conclusion.

 

With respect to IEEE mechanisms, IEEE defines Amendments and Corrigenda:

 

*  "Amendment: A document that contains new material to an existing IEEE
standard and may contain technical corrections to that standard. 

*  Corrigendum: A document that only contains technical corrections to
an existing IEEE standard."

"Amendments
<http://standards.ieee.org/guides/opman/sect1.html#amendment>  and
corrigenda
<http://standards.ieee.org/guides/opman/sect1.html#corrigenda>  are
independent projects and are processed with separate PARs and balloted
independently in accordance with the requirements of these procedures,
including submission to the IEEE-SA Standards Board."

An errata sheet is only for editorial errors in the published standard.
We bent the rules a little with 1364-2001 Version C and even so, there
was a lot of stuff we were not able to put in.

 

Regards,

Shalom

	 

	
________________________________


	From: owner-ieee1800@server.eda.org
[mailto:owner-ieee1800@server.eda.org] On Behalf Of Brad Pierce
	Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 10:54 PM
	To: IEEE 1800
	Subject: RE: [P1800] Draft PAR for initial discussion in
December 10, 2009 P1800 Meeting

	Karen,

	 

	It would be a big help if the 1800 planning discussions could
also take into account the issue of Backlog.

	 

	Clarification/Errata -

	1)      There is already a lifetime supply of open Mantis
issues, and they won't stop flowing in.

	2)      Resolving them all is not how I want to spend my
lifetime.

	3)      Only a small subset of these are actually seriously
impeding SV work.

	4)      For that small subset, the sooner they are officially
resolved, the better.

	5)      Probably their resolution would go beyond what's allowed
in an Errata Sheet.

	6)      Suppose every subcommittee identified and resolved their
top 10 most impeding Mantis issues by this time next year -- is there
any IEEE mechanism for officially promulgating them, or would the SV
community need to wait until they were incorporated into the next
revision standard?

	 

	Enhancements -

	7)      It might take more than a lifetime to resolve all of
these worthy enhancement ideas.

	8)      The ones that would make the biggest long-term
contribution will also probably require the heaviest lifting.

	9)      Human nature is to ignore the big stuff, because of the
heavy lifting.

	10)   It would be cool if a "grand challenge" were built in to
the process, such as each subcommittee identifying the single
enhancement that would have the greatest long-term benefit, then making
it happen in the next revision.

	 

	Thanks for listening,

	 

	*  Brad

	 

	From: owner-ieee1800@eda.org [mailto:owner-ieee1800@eda.org] On
Behalf Of Karen Pieper
	Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 3:12 PM
	To: IEEE 1800
	Subject: [P1800] Draft PAR for initial discussion in December
10, 2009 P1800 Meeting

	 

	Hi, all,

	 

	Here is a draft of a proposed PAR for our next Revision of the
P1800.  Please review and be prepared to discuss in our P1800 meeting on
December 10, 2009.  Please note that the IEEE now requires that what we
do be an exact match for what we write in the scope section.  Note that
items preceded by bullets are intended as discussion points, not
recommendations.  Please feel free to bring additional ideas.  I find
having something to poke holes in is easier than a blank sheet of paper.

	 

	Enjoy!

	 

	Karen

	 

	 

	Project Authorization Request (PAR)

	PAR Request Date: 14 January 2010

	PAR Approval Date: 

	PAR Signature Page on File: 

	Type of Project: Revision to IEEE Standard

	Status: Revision to existing IEEE Standard 1800-2009

	Root Project:

	1.1 Project No.: P1800

	1.2 Type of Document: Standard

	1.3 Life Cycle: Full-Use

	1.4 Is this document in ballot now? No

	2.1 Title

	Standard for SystemVerilog: Unified Hardware Design,
Specification and Verification Language

	Old Title

	2.1 Amendment/Corrigenda Title

	3.1 Working Group Name SystemVerilog Language Working Group

	Working Group Chair Pieper, Karen

	Phone: 

	Email: 

	Working Group Vice Chair Neil Korpusik

	3.2 Sponsor IEEE-SA Board of Governors Corporate Advisory Group
(BOG/CAG)

	Sponsor Chair

	3.3 Joint Sponsor

	IEEE Computer Society Design Automation (C/DA)

	4.1 Type of Ballot: Entity

	4.2 Expected Date of Submission for Initial Sponsor Ballot: June
2013

	4.3 Projected Completion Date for Submittal to RevCom: December
2013

	5.1 Approximate number of people expected to work on this
project: 40

	https://spadev.ieee.org/cgi-bin/sadb/par?prttable:1841 (1 of
3)7/31/2006 9:59:44 AM

	Project Authorization Request (PAR)

	5.2 Scope: SystemVerilog 1800 is a Unified Hardware Design,
Specification and Verification language; it was approved by the
IEEE-SASB in November 2009. This standard creates a new revision of the
SystemVerilog 1800 IEEE standard, which includes errata resolutions,
clarifications, and enhancements for hardware design and verification,
including testbench, checkers, assertions, and coverage. 

	 

	*	AMS? This should be added to the scope. That will allow
it, if we decide to do it. I would just copy what it said in the "Old
Scope" on this topic. 

	 

	Old Scope SystemVerilog 1800 is a Unified Hardware Design,
Specification and

	Verification language. Verilog 1364-2005 is a design language.
Both standards were

	approved by the IEEE-SASB in November 2005. This standard
creates new revisions of the

	Verilog 1364 and SystemVerilog 1800 IEEE standards, which
include Errata fixes and

	resolutions; enhancements; Enhanced assertion language; Merge of
Verilog LRM and

	SystemVerilog 1800 LRM into a single LRM; Integration with AMS;
and insures

	interoperability with other languages such as SystemC and VHDL.

	5.3 Is the completion of this document contingent upon the
completion of another document? No

	5.4 Purpose: The purpose of this project is to provide the EDA,
Semiconductor, and

	System Design communities with a solid and well-defined IEEE
Unified Hardware Design,

	Specification and Verification language, while resolving Errata
and developing

	enhancements to the current SystemVerilog 1800 IEEE standard.
The language is designed to

	co-exist with and be interoperable with hardware description and
verification languages presently used by designers. 

	 

	*	A merge of SystemVerilog 1800 with other 

	existing hardware description and verification languages may
also occur.

	 

	Old Purpose: The purpose of this project is to provide the EDA,
Semiconductor, and

	System Design communities with a solid and well-defined IEEE
Unified Hardware Design,

	Specification and Verification standard language, while
resolving Errata and developing

	enhancements to current SystemVerilog 1800 IEEE standard. The
language is designed to

	co-exist, be interoperable, possibly merge, and enhance those
hardware description

	languages presently used by designers.

	 

	5.5 Need for the Project: With the ever increasing complexity of
Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit design (VLSI) in the industry as
driven by performance, functionality and power tradeoffs, the
requirements for an enhanced, more powerful and extensive design
language is also increasing. New designs include deeper pipelines,
increased logic functionality, complexity, and power issues as well as
explosion in the number of lines of Register Transfer Level (RTL) code
as a result of low abstraction level of the design supported by the
existing languages. This has caused an increase, not only in design
complexity, but also in the verification problem. Verification efforts
are consuming 60% of the total design cycle and verification gets more
challenging when multiple disciplines are used at different stages of
the design. Examples of these disciplines are, design specification,
assertion based design, test bench based validation, coverage based
specifications, and more. 

	 

	SystemVerilog 1800 was developed to enable the use of a unified
language for abstract and detailed specification of the design,
specification of assertions, coverage, and testbench verification that
is based on manual or automatic methodologies. It also offers
Application Programming Interfaces (API's) for coverage and assertions,
a vendor independent API to access proprietary waveform file formats,
and a direct programming interface to access proprietary functionality. 

	 

	This standardization project will further develop the current
IEEE standard for SystemVerilog in order to meet the increasing usage of
the language as well as enabling consistent tool behavior from different
vendors. The new revision of the standard will include resolutions and
clarifications to errata and critical enhancements that will enable
successful usage of the hardware design and verification language. 

	 

	5.6 Stakeholders for the Standard: VLSI design and verification
engineers as well as  the EDA industry.

	6.1.a. Has the IEEE-SA policy on intellectual property been
presented to those responsible for preparing/submitting this PAR prior
to the PAR submittal to the IEEE-SA

	Standards Board? Yes Presented Date: 2010-01-14

	If no, please explain: The policy has been reviewed at every
meeting of the Study Group and will be reviewed at all Working Group
meetings the first of which will be held after

	approval of the PAR.

	6.1.b. Is the Sponsor aware of any copyright permissions needed
for this project? No

	If yes, please explain:

	6.1.c. Is the Sponsor aware of possible registration activity
related to this project? No

	If yes, please explain:

	7.1 Are there other standards or projects with a similar scope?
Yes

	If yes, please explain:

	The scope of this PAR covers portions of the scope of previous
PARs submitted by IEEE CS DASC. The existing PARs are: 1076b, 1647,
1666, and 1364. The purpose of this PAR clearly states the intent to
co-exist with the results of the standards produced by these Working
Groups; to the best of our knowledge there are no impediments at this
time to achieve the goal. The work of the 1364  has been completely
subsumed by the P1800.

	In addition Accellera and OSCI (Open SystemC Initiative), both
industry consortia within the EDA industry, have done work that covers
the area of the scope of this PAR. OSCI with SystemC (a system design
language) and Accellera with PSL and OVL, both assertion languages used
in the verification of electronic circuit designs. 

	 

	*	Do we need to add 1735 Design Intellectual Property (IP)
Encryption and Rights Management? 
	*	1801 UPF? 

	 

	Sponsor Organization: IEEE CAG & DASC

	Project/Standard Number: 1076b, 1647, 1666, 1850

	Project/Standard Date: 2013-12-01

	Project/Standard Title: IEEE Standard for VHDL, IEEE Standard
for 'e' Language, IEEE Standard for SystemC, Accellera Standard for Open
Verification Library, IEEE Standard

	Property Specification Language

	7.2 Is there potential for this standard (in part or in whole)
to be adopted by another national, regional, or international
organization? Yes

	Technical Committee Name and Number: IEC TC93 WG2

	7.3 Will this project result in any health, safety, security, or
environmental guidance that affects or applies to human health or
safety? No

	7.4 Additional Explanatory Notes:

	8.1 Sponsor Information:

	Is the Scope of this project within the approved
scope/definition of the Sponsor's Charter? Yes

	If no, please explain:

	 

	
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