VSIA Announces New Members Join in IP Ecosystem Standardization Efforts

-- The VSI Alliance (VSIA), the leading IP standards body for the electronics industry, today announced industry leading companies Altera Corp., Denali Software, Inc., Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Synplicity, Inc. have joined the Alliance to support the creation and adoption of intellectual property (IP) standards created by the Alliance.

"Denali sees VSIA's standardization of critical IP issues through initiatives such as the QIP Metric and IP Encryption as key in the development of an efficient IP ecosystem," said David Lin, vice president of Verification Products at Denali Software, Inc. "As a leading provider of IP and verification IP products, we are pleased to participate in the verification IP quality workgroup, bring valuable customer insights into key industry challenges, and help guide the direction of this standard."

New membership is being driven by success with the VSIA QIP Metric and with new work coming from both the Quality and Protection groups. The recently launched IP Encryption group is basing their standard on encryption work donated by Synplicity and the group plans to have a Beta product available Q4 2007. The VSIA QIP Metric will soon have new spreadsheets that will cover verification and hard IP. The current version of the QIP Metric launched a year ago has been downloaded more than 1,000 times and is experiencing worldwide adoption.

"Over the past couple of years, VSIA has realigned itself to solely focus on the IP ecosystem -- an integral part of today's design chain," said Kathy Werner, president, VSIA. "From IP vendor to integrator to manufacturer, VSIA looks at each stage of the design process and has created or is creating standardized solutions that enable companies to minimize risk and maximize profit when integrating IP."

VSIA Initiatives

The VSIA Quality IP (QIP) Metric has been downloaded over 1,000 times since its public release in Q1 2006 and VSIA will soon release QIP Metric 3.0 to the public from the VSIA website. Version 3.0 will include previously released vendor assessment and soft IP extensions, and also hard IP extensions and overall upgrades to the usability and macros of the spreadsheet. Currently, the VSIA workgroup for the verification IP extension is targeting a mid-2007 release for its beta testing. VSIA is seeking participation for the software IP workgroup from the industry. If you are interested in joining, contact Jodi Bova at membershipservices@vsi.org.

VSIA is currently supporting IP protection through two approaches: IP Encryption and IP Tagging. Efforts in consideration for future development include IP Watermarking and Fingerprinting.

In Q4 2006 VSIA formed the IP Encryption working group, a sub-group of the VSIA IP Protection Pillar, to develop a non-proprietary methodology that will allow IP vendors to create a single version of the encrypted data that can be used by tools from multiple EDA vendors. It will provide EDA, IP and end-user communities a means to address the challenges designers face when using protected IP in their design flows, which are often made up of tools from several different EDA providers.

In November 2006 VSIA released updated the Hard IP Tagging Standard (IPP 1 3.0) and Soft IP Tagging Standard (IPP 4 2.0) documents to the public. In addition, VSIA received a tag reader/writer donation from Freescale Semiconductor that enables users to quickly find and interpret tags within a design. Both standards and the tag reader/writer are available for download from the VSIA website, www.vsi.org.

QIP Metric Logos

Companies can promote their QIP Metric status through the use of the VSIA QIP Metric logos. These logos are graphic symbols identifying IP Vendors that have gone through vendor qualification (QIP Metric Rated logo) or IP Integrators that require QIP Metric scores from their vendors (QIP Metric Adopter logo). QIP Metric logos are available for free download from the VSIA website at www. http://vsi.org/pillars/quidelines.htm

About VSIA

The VSI Alliance (VSIA) is an open, international organization that includes representatives from all segments of the SoC industry: system houses, semiconductor vendors, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) companies, and Intellectual Property (IP) providers. VSIA's mission is to dramatically enhance the productivity of the SoC design community by providing leading-edge commercial and technical solutions and insight into the development, integration and reuse of IP. VSIA has wide industry participation with more than 70 member companies from around the world. Membership is open to any company with an interest in the development and promotion of business solutions and open standards used in the design of Systems-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org, or e-mail to info@vsi.org.