A hierarchy of needs for SoC IP reuse

Warren Savage, CEO of IPextreme
(04/17/2006 4:45 PM EDT), EE Times
 
The semiconductor intellectual property (IP) industry is about 15 years old, but it seems that we are still far away from the dream of effective IP reuse on the scale that we need. In the early days, companies could have a legitimate IP make versus buy discussion for their next chip.

Today, such a discussion is out of the question as current chip designs are so large and complex that we have crossed over the threshold where every design contains purchased IP. For far too many, though, it is still not a happy story.

How can it be that with such a clear demand, IP sellers and buyers still struggle to find a winning business model and value proposition? Perhaps it’s that we don’t have a clear agreement on what’s important.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow published a paper on his theory that all human beings have a basic set of needs that form a hierarchy. The most basic needs have the highest priority, like having enough food and water to survive the day. Once a lower order of the hierarchy is satisfied, higher level needs such as security, being part of a social community, and ego-related needs like self-esteem become increasingly important.

The final level of the hierarchy is called “self actualization”, where one becomes capable of achieving their full potential. Whether Maslow’s theory is correct is beside the point, but the idea of a hierarchy model to relate the relative priority of a vast set of IP deliverables for the SoC designer may be very useful.

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