Wednesday, May 13, 1998

Introductions

Bob Downing, VSO Chair, called the meeting to order at 8:30 AM and asked attendees to introduce themselves.

Minutes Approval

The minutes from the March meeting were sent to members via email and posted on the VITA web site. The minutes were approved as posted.

Agenda Review

The agenda was reviewed. Doug Patterson, DY4, asked that his presentation be moved from Thursday to Wednesday. His presentation was added to the end of the day on Wednesday.

Patent Disclosure

Bob reviewed the ANSI Patent Policy and the VSO Early Patent Disclosure policy. No patents were disclosed.

Patent Discussion

John Rynearson, VITA, gave an overview of issues re: patents and the standards development. See attached presentation. John noted VSO duties to patent holders, implementers, and ANSI requirements. Much discussion followed. Members asked John to contact ANSI re: its requirement to seek willingness to license from a patent holder. Also the VSO needs to determine the best approach to determine the relevance of patents to specific standands where questions exist.

Canvass Ballot Report

John reported on the status of proposed standards in the ANSI process. The following proposed standards are in ballot review: VITA 1.1-1997, VME64x, VITA 1.3-1997, 9U. The following proposed standards have entered a 90 day canvass ballot: VITA 19, Busnet, VITA 25, VISION, VITA 26, Myrinet. The following proposed standards are in canvass ballot solicitation: VITA 17, FPDP, VITA 18, VME on SEME, and VITA 23, VME64x for Physics. Anyone with a direct and material interest in anyone of these proposed standards should contact the VITA office (techdir@vita.com) to find out how to participate in the canvass process.

VITA Report

Ray Alderman, Executive Director of VITA, reported on VITA activities. He noted that VITA is enhancing its web presence with a pcisource.com web site. VITA members with PCI based products will be able to list their products on this site. Once this web site is up it be will interlocked with both the VITA and the ESOFTA web sites. VITA will start offering banner ad opportunities to its members in June. Ray also discussed his views on the movement of PC's to a serial based data flow architecture and how this will affect the embedded market.

*** BREAK ***

VITA 1.1-1997, VME64x Ballot Review

Wayne Fischer, Force, led the VME64x ballot review. Wayne discussed all ballot comments. Comments regarding 2eVME and CR/CSR were deferred to the VME64x task group for resolution. Wayne expects to have the draft revised within the next two weeks. A 30 day recirculation ballot will be held at that time. All comments and their resolution will be posted on the VITA web site. See attached comments and letter.

VITA 1.3 Canvas Ballot Report

Bob Downing noted that the VITA 1.3 canvass ballot had been completed with no negative comments. Several affirmative votes were made with comments and Bob will address these. Once the draft is revised it will be submitted to ANSI for approval.

VITA 1.6, Keying for Conduction Cooled VME

Holly Sherfinski, Harting, reported on the status of VITA 1.6. The first task group ballot passed the 75/75 VSO rule. Most comments have been addressed. Draft 0.3 will be available next week. A second task group ballot will then be held to review the changes. Holly noted that anyone can make the keying parts. See attached presentation.

*** LUNCH ***

160 Pin Connector Report

Holly Sherfinski, Harting, gave an update on the 160 pin connector. A connector modified to address insertion issues has been available since March 1998. See presentation on VITA web site. Generic design guide for extender available. Those interested in further development of 5 row rear I/O should contact Dave or Holly. The 160 pin connector is being standardized within the IEC. The draft has been submitted to the German National Standardization Committee and been approved as a new work item. Positive votes have been submitted by France, Italy, Japan, the UK, the USA, and Germany. Holly noted that after initial circulation it can take up to 2 years to have a final published document

Harting has a backplane retro fit kit that can be used to replace backplane connectors. Contact Harting. Dave Robak noted that original concerns regarding shell dimensions proved to be unfounded. Tests at Harting indicated that almost all connectors being used today have wall thickness within standard tolerances. Most of the problems have to do with variability in pin shape. The new connector design accommodates these issues.

See presentation.

VITA 1.4, VME64x Live Insertion

Lou Francz recommended that we conduct a task group ballot on the live insertion standard. A sign-up sheet for balloting was passed out.

VITA 1.5, 2eSST

Mac Rush, Motorola, presented the results of the task group ballot to date. He noted that some members indicated that they had not received the ballot. Comments were received from Chris Parkman, John Rynearson, and Jing Kwok. Drew Berding's comments were sent, but were not received by Mac. See attached.

VITA 28, vPCI

Rick O’Connor, Tundra, noted that he had gotten a lot of interest in the concept of vPCI during customer visits. He indicated that customers would like a better software solution and vPCI is one method to provide this. However, Rick felt that implementing vPCI would require a draft standard that was more encompassing than originally envisioned by the VITA 28 task group. He noted that the VSO group was good at producing standards for mechanicals and protocols, but that previous software efforts had not been effective. He asked for input from the group.

Everyone agreed that to integrate a system the software effort outweighed hardware effort and that customers wanted a better solution. Bob McKee discussed the OE (open environment) effort and volunteered to present more detailed information at the July VSO meeting. Joe Bedard felt the group needed to define the problem before developing a solution. Lou Francz asked what current Pentium based VME manufacturers are doing. Danny Cohen, Myrinet, suggested it might be the right moment for a paradigm shift in VME for a VMEbus Interface Environment. Jim Botte noted interest at Nortel in the vPCI idea. Ray Alderman suggested that attempts in the past to get consensus among software manufacturers had not worked and that hardware manufacturers would be more successful if they defined the required standards. Ray will ask Kim Clohessy to present his views at an upcoming VSO meeting.

VITA 30 Report

Elwood Parson gave a report on the status of VITA 30. Elwood noted that the purpose of VITA 30 is to standardize the mechanical form factor for cPCI. The initial draft is complete except for the placing of drawings and figures. It should be posted on the VITA web site within two weeks.

PMC I/O Discussion

Doug Patterson, DY4, brought up for discussion the issue of differing pin assignments in VME64 and VME64x for PMC I/O. He noted that the suggested use of rows A and C for VME64 and rows Z and D for VME64x meant that a forward incompatibility issue was raised. Much discussion ensued. A resolution was presented and passed to set up a task group to address this issue. A sign-up list was passed around.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00 PM for the day.

Thursday, May 14, 1998

Call to Order

Bob Downing called meeting to order at 8:35 AM.

Announcements

Drew Berding announced that VME320 backplanes are available off the shelf from Bustronic Corp. in several standard sizes with 24-hour shipments. Wayne Fischer asked that a task group meeting for VME64x will be held after the adjournment of the VSO meeting.

P2CI

Paul Linares was not able to attend the meeting. He submitted the following email report:

As I am not able to attend this VITA meeting, here is a status :

- Backplanes : P2CI backplanes are scheduled for June 98.

SCHROFF and TRENEW are providing backplanes

(respectively 6 slot backplane and 3 slot backplane)

- P2CI testing :

* real measurement will be made on the backplanes

* simulation results and real measurements will be compared

Further results will be provided at the next VITA meeting.

John Rynearson noted that another company has expressed interest in putting PCI on the P0 connector and may come to a future VSO meeting to present their proposal.

Backplane Presentation

Bob Sullivan, Hybricon, reported on work Hybricon had done to achieve 560 MB/Sec on VME64x backplanes using existing ABTE ETL transceivers. Based on this work Bob feels that speeds of 930 Mbytes/sec are achievable. See attached presentation.

VITA 20, CCPMC

Doug Patterson gave a short report on the status of CCPMC. The current draft, V1.6, will be updated to V1.7 and posted to the VITA web site in about a week. A proposal for a secondary thermal interface has been reviewed and will be included in V1.8 of the draft. V1.8 should be available before the July VSO meeting.

TEMPE Report

Jim Botte, NORTEL, gave a report on the status of TEMPE. After much thought he has decided to break TEMPE up into technology segments and pursue the development of individual standards. Jim presented the packaging scheme that TEMPE uses and circulated a task group sign up list for members to sign. This packaging will be refereed to as Telco Advantage Packaging. Several members ask Jim why he felt another packaging standard besides 1101 was required. Jim noted that the current 1101 standard did not meet appearance and other requirements of NORTEL.

Jim reported that NORTEL had developed an 1149.5 FPGA and was interested in talking with anyone that would be interested in the chip. He noted earlier discussions re: 1149.5 for use as the Test and Maintenance bus.

John Rynearson reviewed currently scheduled VSO meeting dates and selected tentative dates for January, March, May, and July of 1999. The meeting dates and locations are fixed through the end of the year. Dates and locations for 1999 are tentative.

Confirmed Schedule for the rest of 1998

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Jul 15-16 Doubletree Hotel, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Sep 16-17 Resort Suites, Scottsdale, AZ

Nov 18-19 Resort Suites, Scottsdale, AZ

Tentative Schedule for 1999

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Jan Santa Clara, CA with RTC, if not then Reno, Nevada

Mar 17-18 Orlando, FL

May 19-20 Phoenix, AZ

July 14-15 Portland, OR

There being no further business to conduct, Bob Downing adjourned the meeting at 10:50 AM.

Submitted by John Rynearson, VITA.