OCP-IP Update: January, 2009

The first half of 2009 will be a very exciting time for OCP-IP as we continue expanding both the OCP specification and supporting infrastructure surrounding all of our specifications. Members enjoy extensive use of, and contribution to, our infrastructure. Their contributions of expertise allow us to spread R&D costs across multiple companies in addition to ensuring best-of breed tools. Properly leveraging OCP-IP’s tools and infrastructure saves our members hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

OCP v.3.0, will be released to member review in the first half of 2009. It includes the additions of cache coherence extensions, power management signaling, a write response extension as well as a new consensus profile. In the coming months our Marketing Working Group will be working to publish technical articles on the new features of OCP v.3.0. In addition, our Specification Working Group will shortly begin outlining plans for OCP v.4.0. Our System Level Design Working Group’s project to evolveand enhance the entire Transaction Level Modeling kit is nearly complete and now supports modeling proposed in OSCI 2.0. The kit is expected to be released into member review in April. The new kit represents the first, and most advanced TLM-2.0 based, industry-ready kit in existence today. It should be the first port of call for the entire ESL world. This work ensures the OCP-IP kit continues to be the leading-edge offering through CY 2010. Our TLM kits are FREE to members as part of their membership entitlement and save our members hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in development, documentation, and training cost which they would have to support had they chosen to develop such kits independently. Please watch the next few editions of our newsletter closely as we detail the technical and business implications of these kits through our planned technical articles.

Our Meta Data Working Group has nearly completed its work on extensions to IP-xact that will enable us to better capture the richly detailed OCP interface in this meta data format. This information will allow our members to leverage both IP-xact and OCP ensuring lower development costs and quicker time to market. In addition to the work by our technical working groups, the OCP-IP Marketing Working Group (MWG) has been hard at work increasing our focus on, and leveraging the benefits from, internet communication with our membership. To this end, we have posted an online trade show booth on the new Xuropa website. Our online booth is available all year around, in all time zones and geographies. It allows our members to see detailed OCP documentation as well as products, and hosts an online forum.

Please take a moment to stop by the Xuropa site and sign up as an OCP-IP subscriber. In addition, OCP-IP is further enhancing our newsletter by moving it to an online-only format which allows us to expand to more pages while adding detailed technical articles illustrating the tools and infrastructure available to members, as well as describing how other members are leveraging the advantages of the OCP specification in their environment. We are constantly looking for new and substantial ways to continue expanding the value of OCP-IP membership. If you have ideas, comments, or suggestions on support tools or surrounding infrastructure that your company could leverage, please feel free to drop me a line at ian@ocpip.org.