Meeting 43 Minutes

Teleconference, June 2, 2008

A quorum of seven out of nine voting members present. Three non-voting members are also present. Attendance and voter status indicated on the roster web page.

Monday, June 2, 2008, 1600 UTC; 9 am Pacific Daylight Time

Attendees: Darren Galpin, Serrie Chapman, Andrew Piziali, Mike McNamara, Joe Hupcey, Yaron Kashai, Joe Daniels, Matan Vax, Mark Strickland, Stylianos Diamantidis

1. Call to Order

• Call to order on June 2, 2008 at 9:02 am PDT (17:02 UTC)

• Andrew reminded members to mail a message to rollcall@ieee1647.org and the database will record your presence for future voting purposes.

2. Approval of April 14^th Meeting 42 Minutes

• Serrie Chapman made a motion to approve the meeting 42 minutes.

• Mike McNamara seconded the motion.

• Motion approved.

3. Status Updated

Andrew: You should be aware by now IEEE 1647-2008 is now an approved IEEE standard. It was approved by the IEEE Standards Association on May 19^th. We publicized that about a week later in a number of venues and got some interesting press to say the least. Any comments?

Joe: What was interesting about what was said in the press?

Andrew: The one that caught my eye—I mentioned this to Darren earlier—was the following quote I received in an email message: “Some SystemVerilog blogger thinks that I am no smarter than a 5^th grader.” That was in response to a press release on 1647 and a well known EDA writer sent that note to me! There has been some other pretty good press. Richard Goering wrote a pretty good article and JL Gray at CoolVerification.com took a stab at commenting on it also.

Within our status update we have a schedule looking forward (I’ll get to DAC in a moment). I have recently posted the editorial changes I’d like to make to the code examples. Mark Strickland and I had some good dialog. He pointed out some ambiguities that certainly ought to be resolved as well as pragmatic concerns on the use of semicolons within a production environment. I guess for the editorial changes I’ll be submitting those to the editorial staff in another couple of weeks. The IEEE-SA editorial board will be editing the standard, the LRM, over the next couple of months and then that should be published in the fall for general use. In the July time frame I’ll be submitting the P1647-2010 PAR so that we can continue work on it and see if there are any revisions to the standard as it stands currently. Then in the fall I will also schedule working group elections for the executive staff. Any comments on the schedule?

Okay, moving along to DAC. So far I’ve got availability time slots from Stylianos, Mac, Cristian and myself. So there are four of us. We may hold an informal meeting. Is anyone else going to be at DAC that could make some time available to touch base with the other WG members?

Joe D: As you know I'll be there, tell me what to do and what the time is and I’ll figure that out.

Andrew:Yep. I’ll send out an email message on the common time slot. I think we're currently constrained by Stylianos' time, but we still have overlap for everybody so I will send a note out this week. It will be an informal meeting next week just to touch base and will not count towards voting privileges.

4. Editor

Andrew : Anything interesting going on Joe?

Joe D: No. Other than Mark's suggestion, I think we have to wait until the next revision. If you guys wanted to envelop it into the current one you would have to go through a process called publishing and [garbled] and that involves a formal ballot. The only possible work-around on that Andy is request that to the IEEE but I’m pretty sure that they’d just come back and say what I just said.

Andrew: My inclination, unless Mark objects, would be to insert that disambiguation language into the LRM on the next revision. Mark, do you have any comments on that? What do you think?

Mark: I think its okay if we do it in the next revision. I don’t know if there any way to find out who’s planning to save things for the next revision. Is there any way that we can figure that out?

Andrew: We can certainly include a note in the minutes because they are posted on the website each month. We could also give it larger prominence if it were needed in some other place, maybe even under … I think we have a section named “Recent Changes/Items.” We could put a note in there so it shows up on the top of that list on the main web page first.

Mike: Did we do a press release about the 2008? One of the things you could do is to mention that we’re beginning the next process.

Andrew: Yes there is. That was out there on the 23^rd. It’s got a note that says “This press release was put on the Business Wire and distributed to the EDA press this week. Also, Richard Goering published the article ‘IEEE e Language Update Shows Continuing Momentum’ about the new IEEE 1647 standard.”

Mike: Did that mention kicking off the next WG and so on? Or not?

Andrew : No, but that could be something I put on there this week.

Mike : When the PAR gets approved to do the next [revision]—I’m not sure quite where we are—as typically when we get a PAR approved then we could do a press release at that point. You can put that on the business wire and that’s basically free. Then those who are interested come join and that’s your duty to inform.

Andrew: That makes sense Mac around July.

Mike : Yep. I think that would probably be the time.

Joe D: It will be easier to say that it goes into the next revision.******* ?? [garbled] …

Mark: I think that's fine. If anyone’s planning to develop an e parser or some other e tool, they can be invited to join the 2010 standard.

Joe D : [garbled]

Joe H: We should catch Cristian at DAC as he has an e parser. He should be encouraged to join.

Andrew: That’s right. He and I are scheduled to meet Joe. In fact I suggest for the WG in general and at grass roots level and those developers out there that have e support it wouldn’t hurt to simply touch base with them as you run into those folks we’ll also include that in a website announcement.

5. Other Business

Joe D: Just to reinforce the object of the WG ... [garbled] … I’m dormant until some additional work towards the 2010 version probably later this year.

Andrew: One other thing I would like to mention too: This is the first time in which anybody in the WG can open an issue in terms of suggested changes along the lines that Mark and I will be putting in regarding disambiguating null elements and the other comments in the language. But there are other things. Darren, you mentioned that Infineon had a desire to put in define-as-computed if I’m not mistaken?

Darren: Yes, that is correct.

Andrew : There you go. I think we’ve already got an issue open on that, but those will be considered in the near future.

Joe H: We should collect these things internally, but does it make sense then .. Andrew you said in the July time frame you’ll go through the next round of the PAR product authorization thing. Should we wait and go through it in a meeting like this, or ..?

Andrew: My suggestion would be that between now and the August meeting we will open issues for the various suggestions. So, electronically within the WG post them, send a note out to the WG to let them know that you’ve opened an issue and then we can dialog on them. We’ll be prepared then to talk about them in the context of the August meeting.

Mike: Even without the PAR this group still needs to exist to maintain the standard, just to be around watching to see if there are any issues, and collecting them and so on. We can’t develop new chapters and so on but just to answer questions—like this semicolon question—i.e. does the standard allow you to have this construct or not? We are the body that would be [making that decision] ... We need to collect them, but if there are no questions and there is no progress in technology then we don't need to form a new group. Even if it was a very mature standard and there wasn’t much going on we would need to exist for a year or so to answer any questions or clarifications.

Andrew: Yaron, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the current PAR is valid to the end of the current year.

Yaron: PARs are valid for five years, and this one was approved in 2006 so is valid until at least 2011.

Joe D: ???? garbled ….

Andrew: Does that answer your question, Joe H?

Joe H: Yes.

Andrew: Please remember to mail rollcall@ieee1647.org to record attendance.

 6. Call For Essential Patents

The IEEE-SA updated the patent policy effective April 2008. The details are available in updated slide set at: http://standards.ieee.org/board/pat/pat-slideset.pdf (See "Patent related" from the IEEE 1647 home page, "Slides about IEEE Patent Policy"). If you believe that any patent claims are essential patent claims, please inform the working group. Review the posted slides for more information.

7. Next Meeting

Andrew: August 4th, 9am PDT

 8. Adjourn

Yaron made a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Serrie seconded the motion.

Motion approved.

Meeting adjourned at 9:18 am PDT.