On Cores
Meditations on the semiconductor and IP industries
By Warren Savage, CEO, IPextreme



Tuesday Apr. 03, 2007

Chateau de IP Anyone?

Here on a beautiful sunny spring day in California, I had the pleasure of visiting a few small wineries and tasting the wares of the local vintners. Peering through each glass of delightful ruby liquid, I found myself taking careful note of the characteristics of each wine. Did the wine have "legs"? How was its "nose"? Did the taste explode in you mouth like a cornucopia of fruit and flowers? The evaluation process was both complex and personal.

Continue reading "Chateau de IP Anyone?" »


Posted by Warren Savage on Tuesday Apr. 03, 2007 | Add a Comment



Monday Mar. 26, 2007

FPGA users running the Red Queen's IP race

FPGA companies are dutifully keeping pace with Moore's Law. Every year, we get faster, larger devices and the pundits regularly predict FPGA's are nearing the point where they can steal market share from ASIC and ASSP companies. But it never happens. ASIC starts continue to drop, but it is the ASSP companies that seem to be benefiting from that market shift. Isn't that curious?

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Posted by Warren Savage on Monday Mar. 26, 2007 | Add a Comment



Sunday Mar. 18, 2007

System Verilog still risky as an IP platform

I'm excited as anyone about System Verilog. It is a significant step forward towards a unified implementation and verification language for the design of semiconductors. Yet the reality of it supplanting today's languages is still far away due to uneven support by the EDA community.

Continue reading "System Verilog still risky as an IP platform" »


Posted by Warren Savage on Sunday Mar. 18, 2007 | Add a Comment



Wednesday Mar. 07, 2007

Are we ready for pricing transparency?

How's your IP buying experience? If you are like most people I've talked with it ranks somewhere between a visit to the dentist and buying a used car.

At the IP-SOC 2006 conference this year in Grenoble, Gartner's Jim Tully called on the IP industry do a better job of conveying the true value that they provide to customers and at the same time to think about more transparency in pricing to improve the buying experience among customers. That's a lovely thought, but is there a precedent for such move?

Continue reading "Are we ready for pricing transparency?" »


Posted by Warren Savage on Wednesday Mar. 07, 2007 | Add a Comment





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About the Author

Warren Savage, President and CEO of IPextreme, is a well-known and published authority in the field of semiconductor intellectual property. He has a long history of pushing the envelope of design methodology from his work in fault tolerant computing at Tandem Computers in the 1980's and driving reliable design metholologies into commercial practice at Synopsys for its DesignWare IP product in the 1990s. Much of his thinking became embodied in the seminal book on IP reuse, the Reuse Methodology Manual. Warren is taking his vision to the next level with his latest company, IPextreme, which is focused on enabling broad commercialization of IP captive in large semiconductor companies.