Final Agenda for the 991011 meeting
Attendance list for the 991011 meeting
Working Group reports received before the 991011 meeting

Meeting Minutes

Microprocessor Standards Committee 11 October 1999 Los Altos, CA

Minutes:

I. Call to Order at 6:35 P.M. by the chair, Dave Gustavson

The meeting was held at the Mandarin Classic Restaurant in Los Altos, CA

II. Dinner Speaker

There was no speaker at this meeting

III. Introductions

James R. (Bob) Davis, Edwin Vivian El-Kareh, Martin Freeman, David B. Gustavson, Richard Karpinski, Gregory LeClair, Don Wright

IV. Approval of Agenda

Additions to New Business
Agenda approved without objection (moved by Bob Davis, seconded by Richard Karpinski)

V. Approval of Minutes

Previous minutes approved (after minor edits, now in the online version) without objection

VI. Officers Reports

VI.A. Chair Report

Dave reviewed a summary of ongoing action items regarding problems with reaffirmations or balloting bodies. The IEEE 1596 SCI reaffirmation is stalled because the IEEE has not transferred the corrected document to the IEC, or the IEC has not applied the corrections, which are prerequisite for printing the new document to be reaffirmed in the IEEE (no technical changes were made). Robert Pritchard has tried to get this moving. Dave still holds a revised C-code diskette that has to be provided to the IEC when they go to publication, not clear when or to whom this should be sent.

VI.B. Vice-chair Report

Nothing to report

VI.C. Treasurer Report

The balance in the account is $1499.41.

VI.D. Secretary Report

Nothing to report

VII. Recess

The Treasurer collected $25 meeting fee and $10 International Standards Participation Fee assessments.

VIII. New Project Proposals

VIII.A. Printer Peer to Peer (1394) -- Gregory LeClair

Greg reported on this work, which had been the object of a Study Group for some time, and requested that a PAR be submitted to make this a standards project. Moved by LeClair, seconded by Richard Karpinski, passed with no objection.

IX. Liaison Reports

IX.A. ISO/IEC JTC1 SC26/SC26 TAG

Dave reported that SC26 is nearly finished moving its work into another group now.

IX.B. IEEE Standards Board

No report

IX.C. IEEE Registration Authority (RAC) (Dave Gustavson)

Alive and well, ongoing activity. 42 OUIs in September.

X. Old Business

X.A. Last meeting's 9.3.2 item

Gustavson sent a letter to the FIO (Future I/O) group via their online discussion mechanism, requesting that they bring their 64-bit unique numbers into alignment with the IEEE EUI-64, and received word that this is their intention. Since then, FIO merged with NGIO to form SIO (System I/O). No communication related to this topic has taken place since that merger.

X.B. Move Web site for MSC

Gustavson will cooperate with the new officers as they move the MSC web site from the SCIzzL server to an IEEE facility.

XI. New Business

XI.A. P1101.2 reaffirmation, form balloting body -- John Rynearson

There were no objections to restarting this reaffirmation as requested.

XI.B. P1212r Control & Status Register Arch. PAR revision -- Brian Batchelder

This was a completion-deadline change and a chair change. No objections.

XI.C. P1212r Request to go to Sponsor Ballot, form balloting body -- Brian Batchelder

No objections.

XI.D. P1284r Request to go to Sponsor Ballot, form balloting body -- Don Wright

This work has clarified some points, applied corrigenda, minor modifications. No objections.

XI.E. P1394b High Performance Serial Bus faster/longer, request to go to Sponsor Ballot if approved by WG, form balloting body -- David Wooten

This is being preapproved by the MSC (giving discretion to the MSC chair) in order to avoid a 3-month synchronization delay. No objections.

XI.F. P1394.1 High Performance Serial Bus Bridges, PAR revision -- Richard Scheel

It was noted that this document used an old PAR form, must be resubmitted on the new one. Approved with no objections.

XI.G. P1596.2 Guide for Kiloprocessor Extensions for SCI, request to go to Sponsor Ballot, form balloting body -- Stein Gjessing

This work is getting close to a deadline, preapproved by the MSC to avoid a timeout. No objections.

XI.H. Study Group for Guide to Using Hermaphroditic Connectors -- Richard Karpinski

Gustavson appointed Karpinski chair of a Study Group to pursue this work.

XI.I. 754 Floating Point, reaffirm or revise -- Edwin Vivian El-Kareh

Will work with Bob Davis and Richard Karpinski to identify a chair to lead a revision project or to restart its reaffirmation.

XI.J. Potential cross fertilization between MSC and new video/audio digital standards groups -- Bob Davis

Bob pointed out that there are some potential benefits to several of these activities becoming aware of each other. No official action was taken.

XII. Working Group Status Reports

XII.A. IEEE P1537 -- Bob Davis

There is a potential chair, but confirmation has not been received yet. There is still a real need for this. There is a commercial company in India that claims the standards committees should leave this topic to them.

XII.B. IEEE P1996 -- Bob Davis

Gaining support, several companies interested in adoption now that there is a real crate and backplane to show.

XIII. Study Groups

Nothing to report.

XIV. Election of Officers

One nominee willing and able to serve was found for each office. No other nominations were offered from the floor. Moved by Martin Freeman, seconded by Richard Karpinski, to close nominations. Slate of officers approved by acclamation:

XV. For the Good of the Society

Dave Gustavson bade the MSC farewell and expressed his best wishes for increased success and vitality. Dave noted that this is the 400th IEEE standards-related meeting for which he has kept attendance and mailing-list records in his Hypercard (Mac) database. The first was the beginning of the Scalable Coherent Interface project on November 9, 1987. Most in the last few years were P1596.7 SLDRAM-related.

Dave is going to try retirement for a while, since SCIzzL activity seems to have reached a natural break with the cancellation of the SLDRAM project (Intel declared Rambus the winner!); SLDRAM work had provided most of the financial support for SCIzzL operations in recent years. SLDRAM demonstrated with real chips that it met its goals for speed and manufacturability, but could not overcome the market advantage Intel gave Rambus.

Also, the IEEE is now in direct competition with SCIzzL. The new IEEE ISTO program is set up to provide services and aid standardization work in essentially the same way SCIzzL did for the SLDRAM project (and many other IEEE standards groups).

Amusingly, this is the second time the IEEE has "put Dave out of business"--the first was Dave's Unique Number service that he established at the request of the Futurebus working group, which sold one 32-bit number (unique!) and then was superceded by an IEEE service, a generalization of the Ethernet unique numbers.

Dave said that SCIzzL isn't being shut down completely--SCIzzL will continue to host occasional meetings, but at a reduced level until some other source of funding appears. SCI adoption continues to grow, with support from Sun now appearing across its entire range of servers. Eight manufacturers use SCI (or almost-SCI) in computers that they are currently shipping! But nobody is using SCI as a true open standard for multi-vendor data interchange, and thus there is no industry support at this time for an SCI trade association or for further joint SCI-supporting standards work.

XVI Next Meeting

January 10, 2000, 6:30PM, at the Mandarin Classic Restaurant in Los Altos

There will be a planning meeting at 5:00PM

prior to the start of the meeting. In order to attract a wider participation in the MSC planning we may want to consider sending a notice out to the working groups that their participation would be welcomed. We should try to attract new people and new ideas into the planning process.

Meeting adjourned at 9PM.

Respectfully submitted,
David Gustavson
(version 1)