Design VASG Kicks-Off VHDL 200x Stephen Bailey Chair

Agenda Welcome Review of Tuesdays Public Meeting What we are NOT doing today What we are doing today Schedule & Next meeting(s)

Welcome! I’m pleased by the interest in the future of VHDL! After a few false starts  I am glad to report that I am actually being pushed by others to get this work moving and on track!

Review of Public Meeting On Tuesday, we held a public meeting at DVCon Purpose: Publicize our work to update VHDL Response: (TBD)

What We are NOT Doing Today We are not here to gather requests We are not here to discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of requests We are not here to analyze any requests We are not here to design solutions to any requests We are not prepared to jump into this level of detail!

What are we doing today? Glad you asked. Agree on an overall process Agree on an initial break-out of functional responsibilities Identify the leaders for each functional team Identify key milestones Set schedules to meet milestones  We will ship on schedule!

Chair /= Dictator What follows is my strawman submitted for discussion Please, let us not get our britches twisted in a knot Let’s agree on the general process Get started immediately (tomorrow) on enhancing VHDL Remain reasonable professionals during the process

The Process Collect requests Reasonableness check & assignment Analyze request Propose language change Review change Integrate change Update LRM Ballot & Publish Repeat (as needed)

The Process Validation  No recommended change will be accepted unless: At least one EDA vendor has prototyped the change At least one end user has tested the change Discard anything that  No one cares to implement  Nor can be bothered to try (or pressure their favorite EDA vendor to prototype)

Accellera & IEEE IEEE owns the copyright to VHDL  Therefore, official standardization via IEEE standards balloting process Accellera  Facilitates: Resources, coordination and publicity  Informal (de facto) interim standardization “Sense-of” System Verilog 3.0, 3.1, etc. Serves as a “light-weight” synchronization point

Fast-Tracking Can (should) we fast-track a limited set of capabilities? 1164 and could use:  vector/scalar logical operations  unary reduction operations  Standard Signal Spy / XMR capability  to_string/to_str functions added to TextIO I think we should try to meet their needs ASAP

Teamwork Must divide the work to make timely progress  How many teams?  Scope for each team?  Resolving overlaps?  Reviewing team findings and recommendations  Integrating team results into a coherent whole But WG can direct priorities

Proposed Team Structure Fast-Track (J Lewis & J Willis) Simulation performance (J Ries) Testbench/verification (W Ecker/M Bauer?) Assertion-based verification (R Anderson) Environment (D Soderberg?) Modeling and productivity (J Lewis) Data types and abstraction (P Menchini) Miscellaneous (J Willis) Steering Committee (S Bailey)

Fast-Track Could be ISAC Possible that Fast-Track becomes Misc team after fast-track is completed in 6 months

For each team Enumerate initial assignment of requests (Want to get agreement from “steering committee before I spend the time on this”) Also, want to allow the flexibility that more than one team can analyze the same request  Require both (all) teams to agree to proposed (re)solution Team members and team leader

Schedule DATE  Informational meeting (like DVcon mtg) DAC  Each team has: Reasonableness check of all assigned requests Prioritized what is to be done when General direction for highest priority items Schedule to achieve draft 1  Fast-track has: Technical proposal submitted for WG review and approval

Schedule DAC+1 month  WG determination of fast-track update  Will it be submitted for balloting? Dec 03  Draft 1 submission to VASG for approval May or may not be submitted for IEEE balloting WG needs to decide if IEEE approval at that time is a good use of time Clearly some relationship to fast-track

Schedule DAC 04  Draft 2 submission to WG for review/approval  Determination if draft 2 should be submitted for IEEE balloting  WG assessment of remaining work Development of continued work plan Including additional drafts IEEE balloting

Schedule Steering Committee  WG Chair, ISAC Chair, team leaders  Review progress bi-weekly Teams  Must meet no less frequently than bi- weekly to ensure progress  Assume virtual meetings (telecon/web) Up to team to decide most effective way to meet