On September 18, 1997, NESA sponsored the kickoff meeting of the IBIS -
East Forum. The purpose of the meeting was to encourage the participation of
East coast designers of computer, communication and telephony systems in the
in the development of IBIS behavioral modeling as a tool in their system
design practices. There were a total of 43 participants at the meeting
held in the Boxboro, MA Holiday Inn. The meeting was chaired by NESA's CEO,
Dr. Ed Sayre.
Area participants included engineering personnel and designers from Boston
area computer, EDA software vendors and others. Out of town participants
included designers from the New York City environs, Princeton, NJ, Hartford
CT as well as visitors from Intel locations in California and Oregon, Texas
Instruments in the Dallas TX area, an engineer from the "new" Fairchild
Semiconductor in Portland, ME as well as engineers from Seattle, WA and
Portland, OR. It seemed that there was an old home week atmosphere between
present and ex-DEC folks and a group of designers from both coasts who had
worked for Tektronix in Oregon. Its really a small world when you get to
high performance designers.
The first featured speaker was Bob Ross, Chairman of the IBIS Forum and
member of the technical staff of Interconnetix an EDA software house. Bob
spoke about the history of IBIS and the development of the standard to meet
a real world need for large system simulation and verification for signal
integrity and routing performance. The IBIS standard has progressed to the
point that it now comes under Electronic Industries Association (EIA)
sponsorship. Future developments in multi-line transmission line modeling
and other packaging issues were greeted with interest. His enthusiasm for a
group on the East coast was heartfelt as he saw it as a necessary extension
for the use IBIS as a behavioral standard for the description of
semiconductor devices and interconnect system components.
Gary Husted of Intel, Hillsboro, OR spoke about the trials and tribulations
of implementing an IBIS capability for boards level systems design. The
comment was made by someone that there were probably over 10,000 IBIS models
for semiconductors, with 95% of them flawed in some way. It is strictly a
buyer beware situation unless you know where the model has lived previously.
The representative from TI stated that TI is committed to the standard and
accurate behavioral characterization models based on the standard. Gary was
forthright in stating that a company has to make the investment for some
time before the process runs smoothly. The EDA company representatives made
the additional comment that they can provide software that computes
correctly, but only if the underlying models are themselves correct.
Intel's commitment to IBIS was clear from Gary and other Intel engineers
either who use IBIS or who themselves create IBIS models of Intel parts.
Ed Sayre then made a sales pitch for participants to help with organization
and topics for future East Coast user group meetings. About 25% of the
participants said they would help out. The next meeting will be held in
approximately four to six weeks. Notices will be sent to interested
participants by e-mail.
The meeting closed with a panel discussion that focused on tools and EDA
vendor ideas. The panel included Gary Husted, Paul Galloway of Cadence,
David Kohlmeier of HyperLynx and Frederick Saal of View Logic. Questions
from the audience were moderated by Ed Sayre. The questions focused on the
validity of IBIS as a systems description language. All EDA vendors were
committed to IBIS, although how IBIS syntax is handled by their tools and
how IBIS models are created were different for each tool. Also, it was
noted by the audience that the tools were expensive and the existence of a
public version of low cost similar to Berkeley SPICE would be a tremendous
help for systems designers to try out and drive around the block!
If you would like to receive hard copies of Gary Husted's or Bob Ross'
presentations, please send an e-mail with your postal address and the requested
presentation will be mailed to you. Also, let us know if you are interested in
joining the East Coast users group. Thanks to all who took the time and
interest
to attend and participate in the first IBIS East meeting. We look forward to
useful and interesting IBIS discussions in the future.
Regards,
Ed Sayre and Kathy Breda
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| NORTH EAST SYSTEMS ASSOCIATES, INC. |
| ------------------------------------- |
| "High Performance Engineering & Design" |
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| Kathy Breda e-mail: [email protected] |
| NESA, Inc. http://www.nesa.com/ |
| 636 Great Road Tel +1.978.897-8787 |
| Stow, MA 01775 USA Fax +1.978.897-5359 |
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