Industry Expert Blogs

Imagine a world where everything is recycled. The initial energy expended to create something is returned over and over again as that design lives anew, but in different forms. In the paper industry, that may mean that copy paper gains a second life in newspapers, and a third in packing material, and yet a fourth in insulation for green housing. In that industry, the need to recycle is driven by a dwindling supply of natural resources. In our industry—semiconductor intellectual property—similar forces are at play, except our natural resource is engineering brain matter. The best engineers are few, and they are expensive. This “recycled engineering”—or IP reuse, as it is commonly known—is the dream that IPextreme has taken to a new level over the last ten years. By working with large semiconductor companies and the smart engineers at work there, we are able to create a “long tail” of reuse that allows their creations to be reincarnated many times over through establishing a marketplace for their genius. It is tempting to label IPextreme a “retail store” for IP, but that is a bit of a misnomer. The trouble with labels is that they tend to over-simplify what is in fact a very complex business. Just as commercial scale paper recycling may seem simple to the consumer, behind the scenes, there is a quite a machine at work. The fact of the matter is that the IP industry doesn’t lend itself to easy definition using colloquial commercial metaphors (like a “store”). It is simply too complex a business, with buyers and sellers too sophisticated, to apply such labels. That being the case, more sophisticated and precise terminology is needed. It is fair to say that IPextreme is an aggregator of some of the world’s most valuable IP. We work with a variety of large semiconductor companies to unlock their technological treasures and bring those together under a unified portfolio and brand. The closest commercial terminology to describe our role in the industry is that of a value-added reseller (VAR). We source valuable IP, and we further increase its value by preparing it for reuse and integration. Every product in our portfolio is mindfully and meticulously selected, both for superior quality and for greatest appeal to the market; it is then packaged to fulfill the needs of the broadest range of consumers. We are highly selective about the IP we carry because we know that our customers are, too. Speaking of being selective: this seems like a good place for an aside on IP quality. Our definition of quality is generally applicable to anything, be it soft IP, hard IP, or even embedded software. From our point of view, there are three basic aspects of quality:

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