VSO Minutes

March 24-25, 1999

Call to Order

Bob Downing called the meeting to order at 8:03 am. The members were asked to introduce themselves. The January 1999 minutes were approved as written. The agenda was reviewed and several issues were added to the agenda. John Rynearson reviewed the VSO early patent disclosure policy. A call for patents was made and none were disclosed.

VSO Elections

John reviewed the VSO election procedures. The nominations committee talked to the current officers, Bob Downing and Jing Kwok, and asked them to stand for election for 1999. They agreed. Nominations from the membership were solicited. Tad Kubic, DAWN, nominated Elwood Parsons, AMP, for either position. Elwood declined. There being no other nominations, John asked that the membership approve Bob and Jing as chair and vice-chair respectively for 1999. The membership voted all in favor with none opposed.

Announcements

John Rynearson noted that Ron Taulton, Systran, was interested in continuing the Gigabit Serial FPDP effort presented at the November 1998 VSO meeting. A sign-up sheet for this activity was circulated. Those interested in this effort should contact Ron Taulton., ptrimnal@systran.com.

John Rynearson discussed the status of the P1386 and P1386.1 proposed IEEE standards on CMC and PMC, respectively. VITA has paid to have all the drawings redone and they have been sent to Wayne Fischer. Wayne will include these with the text and regenerate the drafts. John said he expects Wayne to attend the May VSO meeting and report on the progress of this effort.

Patent Report

Ray Alderman reported that Nortel legal counsel has declined to meet with VITA to discuss the Nortel patent issues. Ray said that he would continue to monitor the situation and inform the membership of new developments.

VITA Report

Ray announced that the year 2000 Bus&Board conference is scheduled for January 31-February 1 and will be held at the same hotel as last year, the Wyndham Hotel in San Jose. Members interested in the conference should contact Ray at the VITA office. The VITA Europe Busses and Boards conference will be held on February 14-15, 2000 in Amsterdam. Members interested in the VITA Europe conference should contact Bob Squirrell in the VITA Europe office.

Ray noted that he had recently read a book titled "The Friction Free Economy" and urged members to get a copy and read it.

John Rynearson gave a report on the status of draft standards currently in the ANSI canvass ballot process. See attached presentation.

On-Line Standards Discussion

Danny Cohen, Myricom, noted that when a draft standard is approved by ANSI it is taken off VITA's web site. Danny stated that standards should be immediately retrievable from the web. John Rynearson provided some background re: VITA's standards and the group discuss alternatives to providing finished standards online. Some suggestions were to provide standards for download purchase via credit card, to provide copies to members for free, to provide a CD - ROM with all VITA standards on it and to provide a free copy to all who worked on the task group. Dick Somes reviewed the specifications policy used by PICMG. PICMG charges for specifications, but gives members discount prices. John noted that the VITA board will meet before the May meeting and that he will bring this issue up for discussion. John will report to the membership at the May meeting.

SAGE Presentation, Hoyt Layson, Honeywell

Hoyt gave a presentation on SAGE, Systems Architecture Genisys environment. SAGE was developed out of a number of software tools that were funded by DARPA over the past 10 years. SAGE uses the concept of a software shelf and a hardware shelf. The user can configure a system by selecting the appropriate items from the software and hardware shelves. For additional information, see the following URL - http://www.honeywell.com/sage

*** BREAK ***

High Speed Serial Architecture Discussion

Bob McKee, MITRE, presented an overview of the military's requirements for a next generation bus/backplane architecture. See presentation. The military would like a commercially accepted standard interface. One problem with VME is the cost to upgrade existing system software. Reliability is an important issue and Bob noted that experience shows that connector points cause reliability problems. A high speed serial architecture would have less connector points than a parallel architecture.

Ed Barsotti, Fermi, discussed the physics community's needs for a next generation architecture. See presentation. Ed discuss past efforts to take advantage of commercially available technology. VME has been one of the more successful technologies. A preliminary working document can be found at URL: http://www-ese.fnal.gov/vipa/VIPA_SIOA.pdf

Tim Witham, Intel, gave a presentation on NGIO, Intel's Next Generation I/O architecture targeted at the server market. See attached presentation. Tim is a long range product planner who looks at product strategies 2 - 5 years out. Tim noted that the whole world is going 7 x 24 availability. New trends in business are driving requirements. RASUM - reliability, availability, serviceability, usability, manageability is an important requirement that needs to be addressed. NGIO uses a very simple packet protocol. Intel is working with Synopsys to provide a VHDL library model. Intel will not make it generally available on web due to problems of changes causing interoperability problems. See http://www.ngioforum.org for more information.

*** LUNCH ***

FCI/Berg Connector Presentation - John Ellis, Rick Lewis

Rick Lewis discussed a new differential Metral™ connector that FCI/Berg felt would be excellent for use with an NGIO-like backplane interconnect. John Lewis presented some of the electrical characteristics. See attached presentation. Contact FCI/Berg for further info.

Tim Witham, Intel, gave his views on how NGIO could meet VSO's requirement. Tim expressed concerns re: the physics requirements for 100 ps latencies. Tim feels price parity is required versus PCI. NGIO would initially be board to board, but eventually NGIO could be used as a local on-board bus.

Bob McKee discussed a DARPA project called FIRESTORM - "Ultra-High Speed Virtually Switched Interconnection for Electronic Modules" This project is based on the concept of the "software radio". Bob noted that DARPA's mandate is to move its funded research into commercial applications. FIRESTORM uses PCI stackable modules and an optical interface. A virtual cross point switch can concurrently connect any module to any other modules. Members interested in this project should contact Richard D. Ridgley for more info. See attached presentation.

After further discussion on high speed serial architectures, the VSO meeting was adjourned for individual task group meetings.

Bob Downing called the meeting to order at 8:31 AM. Bob discussed how to proceed with task group reports. The task group reports for VITA 32 and VITA 31 were switched to allow more time to discuss VITA 31.

VITA 1.5, 2eSST

Mac Rush reported on the status of the 2eSST effort. The draft will be revised and a task group ballot will be held within the next several weeks.

VITA 1.6, Keying for Conduction Cooled VME

Holly Sherfinski, Harting, held a ballot review meeting. Holly noted that all comments came from affirmative ballots. The current draft will be revised and an ANSI recirculation ballot will start shortly.

VITA 2.1, ETL Extensions

Ed gave a report on the scope and formation of the task group. The group may need to do some simulations and is investigating using LLC funds to do this. See attached presentation. John Rynearson gave a brief update on the status of the LLC. The VITA 2.1 task group will prepare a draft of the scope of work to be accomplished and will submit it to the LLC for a vote. A sign-up sheet for VITA 2.1 interest was distributed. A preliminary requirements document can be found at URL: http://www-ese.fnal.gov/vipa/ETL21rqns.pdf

VITA 20 Report, Conduction Cooled PMC

Ivan Straznicky, DY4, reported on VITA 20 activities. The major issue being debated is whether or not the currently defined secondary thermal interfaces will remain optional or become mandatory. After much discussion the task group decided that secondary thermal interfaces will remain optional.

VITA 27, P2CI

Mike Thompson, Schroff, noted that Trenew and Schroff had committed to producing backplanes for P2CI testing. The Schroff backplane is now available and Mike said that test results should be available at the May meeting.

VITA 29, PC•MIP

Kim Rubin reviewed the last task group ballot. Some of the comments were accepted while others were not. Kim noted that several requests were contradictory and could not simultaneously be accommodated. He thanked Schroff for their efforts in developing the front panel bezels for PC•MIP. Kim will revise the document and it will be submitted to another task group ballot. See attached bezel drawings.

VITA 30, 2mm Equipment Practice for Eurocard Modules

Elwood Parsons, AMP, reported on results of the task group ballot. Many comments were received. A number of editorial comments will be incorporated into the next draft. Major issues include rear transition board mechanical information, added dimensions on figures, wider card slot/wider connector options, and a 1/2 hp offset guide rail. Once the draft is revised a second task group ballot will be held. See attached overheads.

VITA 30.1, 2mm Connector Equipment Practice on Conduction Cooled Euroboards

Dick Somes discussed the scope of this effort. Sponsors who have indicated interest are APW, SBS, and Radstone. A sign-up list was passed around. The current intent is to use a mechanical format similar to IEEE 1101.2. Ray Alderman noted Tom Hall's involvement in the development of 1101.2 and asked that Tom be included in this effort.

VITA 32, Processor PMC

Greg Novak, Motorola, noted that 8 people attended the task group meeting. The task group discussed a number of issues including bridges and taller modules. Seven signals have been eliminated. The arbiter will be on the base module. The task group will try to keep as close to the PMC standard as possible. The draft will be updated and will probably go to ballot in July.

*** BREAK ***

VITA 31 Discussion

Mike Thompson suggested that the group consider using the P0 connector to implement an NGIO interface. The P0 connector has five rows so that two pins could be used for the input, two pins for the output and one for shield ground. He noted that ERNI makes a suitable connector that could be used to route from one P0 connector to another. After more discussion the membership asked Mike to develop a draft standard based on this approach for discussion at the next VSO meeting. Mike agreed and a sign-up list was circulated.

Danny Cohen gave a short presentation on the various network topologies that are possible.

The membership also decided to continue looking at the impact of serial architectures on VME and appointed Bob McKee and Ed Barsotti as co-chairs of the Future Architectures study group. A sign-up sheet for this activity was circulated. See attached list.

After discussion of VITA 31 Bob asked for other issues from the floor. John Rynearson asked members if they like the new meeting format. All agreed that it allowed time to discuss issues in smaller groups. Therefore the May meeting will be structured in the same manner.

Bob Downing thanked the members for their support in reelecting him to the position of chair.

There being no further business the meeting was adjourned at 11:15 PM.

Submitted by:

/s/ John Rynearson, VITA

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