[1076.1] Minutes from September 2006 WG meeting

Hi,

Here are the minutes from the last 1076.1 WG meeting held on Sept. 19, 
2006 in Darmstadt. Thanks to Ernst Christen for having taken the notes.
The slides are available at 
http://www.eda-stds.org/vhdl-ams/ftp_files/wg_meetings/WG_sept06/mtg_slides_19sep06.pdf.

Best regards,
Alain Vachoux

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IEEE P1076.1 Working Group Meeting
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September 19, 2006
Darmstadt, Germany

Attendees
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Alain Vachoux, Swiss federal Institute of Technology, chair
Ernst Christen, Synopsys, Inc., vice-chair
Tom Kazmierski, University of Southampton, secretary
Yannick Herve, University of Strasbourg
Thomas Mähne, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Joachim Haase, Fraunhofer Institute (by phone)
Thuy NT Tran, Pyrotest (by phone)

Alain opened the meeting at 6:15 and presented the agenda (see slides). 
The agenda was silently approved.

Alain presented the WG activities and mentioned that due to the revision 
ballot the WG now has a treasurer position. Ernst Christen is acting 
treasurer until elections are held.

Ernst discussed the issues around the bank account that was opened by 
the WG and presented the financial status of the account.

Alain presented the status of the revision ballot of the 1076.1 
standard. The revised LRM is currently being balloted on, and the ballot 
is expected to close on 9/29.

Alain then gave an overview of the planning activities for future 
language revisions. He outlined a plan how to deal with requests for new 
features and other topics of interests, such as standard packages. 
Besides these, there will be a need to synchronize with 
1076-2006(2007?), which introduces many enhancements to the base language.

Ernst presented the SAE effort to define a package for statistical 
modeling supporting parameter variations. The package is complete and 
has had a successful ballot. It is now awaiting administrative approval 
from the SAE as SAE standard J2748. Ernst suggested to create a link to 
the SAE J2748 web site from the 1076.1 web site once the standard has 
been approved.

Alain asked whether this should also become an IEEE standard. Ernst 
responded that there may not be a need to do this as it is more 
important to have a standard than who sponsors it. There might also be 
copyright issues.

Alain presented the requests for new features that have been submitted 
by users. He described a process how such features should be handled 
(see slides). Each feature needs a champion who drives the feature from 
requirements to definition. Each step must be documented. The WG reviews 
requirements before any further work can be done and decides whether 
this feature should be added or not, and, if added, in what form (new 
language feature, separate package).

Mixed netlists. Ernst summarized the status. This was presented as a 
paper co-authored by John Shields and Ernst at FDL'04. Very little work 
has been done since, due to lack of time. We understand that this is an 
important issue for end users, and it needs attention. Ernst is willing 
to act as champion for this project.

Table data types and lookup functions. Alain asked Joachim to act as 
champion for this project, and Joachim accepted.

Support for requirement and specification. This is based on an 
presentation by Yannick Herve at FDL'04. He is willing to act as champion.

The other suggestions for future work need clarification. No champion 
has yet been selected for them.

Yannick proposed as a new feature to have an ability to declare circular 
branch quantities between consecutive elements of a vector terminal and 
between the last element and the first element of the vector terminal. 
He said that this is something he needs frequently. Ernst suggested that 
an analysis of something similar had been done as part of the original 
language design work, and he believes that this can be done without 
having to add new capabilities. He proposed to look into the issue and 
report to Yannick.

Regarding new meetings, the question was raised whether there should be 
an additional meeting in the US. Tom suggested BMAS (the Behavioral 
Modeling and Simulation Conference), which attracts many current and 
potential users of the language. Ernst observed that BMAS is typically 
very close to FDL so there may be issues with people from the WG 
leadership being able to attend both venues. Alain suggested as an 
alternative DVCon. No decision was made as further investigations are 
necessary.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:10.