VSIA Works with Hong Kong to Extend QIP Metric

—The VSI Alliance (VSIA), the leading IP standards body for the electronics industry, today announced the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) donated its Deliverables Checklist to VSIA. The agreement was based on the organizations common interests in developing an international standard for evaluating semiconductor IP (SIP). Together the VSIA and HKUST will further develop the methodology and tools within the VSIA Quality IP (QIP) Metric with the addition of the Deliverables Checklist. The two groups will also discuss ongoing work on QIP and other VSIA standards and are collaborating on a memorandum of understanding to extend this work to three universities in Mainland China.
 
Over the next year, the HKUST Deliverables Checklist donation and future enhancements will be integrated into the VSIA QIP Metric enhancing the portion of the metric that measures an IP provider’s deliverables. Deliverables include items such as: documentation, logic design, design for test, functional verification and timing-and-power analysis deliverables.  In support of this integration, VSIA has invited HKUST into the IP Quality Pillar as a voting member and both organizations have agreed to work together to further development of the QIP Metric.
 
“We are impressed with VSIA’s leadership in quantifying a metric for evaluating IP and felt that we could add value to the QIP and to the industry through the donation of our deliverables checklist,” said Prof. Philip Chan, Dean of Engineering and the principal investigator of the project from HKUST. “Additionally, we look forward to supporting QIP in China and we hope that we can work together on further development of QIP and other VSIA initiatives.”
 
HKUST developed the deliverables checklist as a SIP tool that will allow third party providers to evaluate customer’s IP by categorizing deliverables using quality evaluation line items. It can be used to automate the generation of objective evaluation data for the determination of customer’s SIP quality, ultimately easing the process of IP integration.
 
“HKUST has put in a great deal of time and effort into the successful creation of the deliverables checklist and we are pleased that they recognized the value of combining the efforts of both groups,” said Kathy Werner, VSIA President. “We look forward to the successful integration of the checklist and to the benefit it will bring to the industry.”
 
About VSIA QIP Metric
The VSIA QIP Metric is a tool that can aggressively reduce the time typically required to make an IP purchase decision and to integrate the core. The Metric helps the IP vendor and IP consumer communicate based on an objective foundation. Besides setting up the basis for measuring a core’s characteristics against an industry-approved list of attributes, the metric provides a view of the IP vendor’s general approach to IP development. This enables a continuous improvement mechanism, and in turn, levels the playing field for vendors and allows an integrator to evaluate similar cores from competing vendors. VSIA is currently working on the development of the verification IP quality extension to the QIP Metric. VSIA QIP Metric was released to the public in January 2006 and has seen over 1000 downloads.
 
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 System-on-Chip. For more information, visit the VSIA web site at www.vsi.org, or e-mail to info@vsi.org.

About HKUST
HKUST is a an internationally recognized research university with a unique blend of education and research programs in science, engineering, business, humanities and social science. Founded in1991, HKUST now has over 9000 students from 40 countries and about 450 faculty members. In fifteen years, it has rapidly evolved into a world-class institution, ranked no.17 globally in the Times Higher Education Supplement 2006 league table of the world's top 100 universities in technology. In the next fifteen years, HKUST strives to continue its quest for excellence through building on its existing strengths in the following five strategic areas: bioscience and technology, nanoscience and technology, environmental science and technology, and business management. For more information, visit the HKUST website at www.ust.hk.