Cadence offers IP service, signs Oki as customer

Cadence offers IP service, signs Oki as customer
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
November 17, 1999 (2:15 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19991115S0030

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Cadence Design Systems Inc. will open the doors this week to its IP infrastructure development service and announce that Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. (Tokyo) is the new business' first large customer.

Cadence has 100 people working in its methodology services group to customize Web-based repository systems that ease the reuse of IP cores — software and hardware — across the Net, said Dave Reed, marketing group director for system-on-chip and IP methodology services.

The infrastructure encompasses technology for packaging, cataloging, managing, storing and distributing IP, including analog and digital hardware and software blocks for integration into integrated circuits, said Reed. It also provides technology for validating the quality of IP and managing online knowledge of design guidelines and methodologies.

Reed said the system is based on a scalable, three-tier client/server architecture using customized Cadence software and was designed to support the Synchronicity DesignSync and Rational ClearCase design data-management tools.

The system that Cadence built for Oki is Internet-based and is meant to increase the productivity of Oki's 1,500 designers, spread across 16 business units worldwide, said Reed. Cadence has thus far put in place the IP management infrastructure, IP recovery and IP authoring portions of an overall system Oki is calling its System LSI development environment.

The infrastructure portion allows Oki to maintain a Web-based IP repository of legacy and third-party IP that can be used by all of Oki's 16 groups.

The Oki infrastructure system goes far beyond a common IP repository, said Aperna Dey, senior technical architect for Cadence's consulting services. In addition to assembling the hardware and wiring the system, Cadence helped Oki devel op a standard methodology to socketize legacy and third-party IP so that it can be used with minimal hassle across all 16 groups, she said. "The system was built so that Oki can add to it as needed and extend access to select customers," said Dey.

"There are a lot of companies today building their own repositories, but a repository is not the be-all, end-all. Rather, it is one component of a three-component solution," added Reed. "To reach the true productivity potential of these systems, you have to develop an IP-authoring methodology and an IP-integration methodology as well as an infrastructure system. We are helping customers like Oki develop that."

Reed said that Cadence's infrastructure-development process includes an assessment, IP qualification methodology, IP database creation, IP catalog setup, administration setup and a flow rollout that is easily communicated to users.

The infrastructure services are immediately available and start at a U.S. list price of $750,000.