Viewpoint: IP cores are in their own world

Ian Mackintosh, President of OCP-IP
EE Times(10/27/2009 2:03 PM EDT)

A recent, informal survey of several sellers, buyers and users of semiconductor IP cores produced an interesting view of current business conditions and what the future might bring.

Overall, it is reported that a very slow recovery is already underway, although IP providers still complain of excruciating pain extracting money from users.

When IP cores are acquired by SoC developers, they undergo an evaluation phase ahead of any purchase, which largely decouples the function's quality issues from the critical development path.

In most Tier 1, 2 and some Tier 3 accounts, after initial budgetary scouting, an engineering group will exercise IP for typically 2 to 4 weeks by verifying, testing, exploring its behavior and functionality in their systems.

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