IP-SoC 2011: prepare the future, what's coming next after IP based design?

By SemiWiki

December 4, 2011

IP-SoC 2011 is the 20th anniversary for the first Conference completely dedicated to IP. IP market is a small world, as EDA a small market if you look at the generated revenue… but both are essential building blocks for the semiconductor industry. It was not clear back in 1995 that IP will become essential: at that time, the IP concept was devalued by some products exhibiting poor quality level, un-efficient technical support, leading program manager to be very cautious to simply decide to buy. Making was sometimes more efficient… In the mean time, the market has been cleaned up, the poor quality product suppliers disappearing (being bankrupt or sold for asset) and the remaining IP vendors have understood the lesson. None of the renewed vendor marketing a protocol based (digital) function would take the chance to launch a product which has not passed an extensive verification program, and the vendors of mixed-signal IP functions know that the “Day of Judgment” will be when the Silicon prototypes will be validated. This leaves very small room for low quality products, even if you may still find some new comers deliberately launching a poor quality RTL function, naively thinking that lowering the development cost will allow to sell at low price and buy market share, or some respected Analog IP vendor failing to deliver “at spec” function, just because… analog is analog, and sometimes closer to black magic than to science!

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