Industry Expert Blogs

It’s about 15 years the concept of IP development and its usage took place. In the recent past the semiconductor industry witnessed start of a large number of IP companies across the globe. However, according to Gary Smith’s presentation before the start of 52^nd DAC, IP business is expected to remain stagnant for next 5 years. There are reasons to believe into Gary’s thesis. A bird’s eye view shows an IP sitting at the heart of an SoC or subsystem. This is significant reason for a system company to assess an IP fully before utilizing it; also assess the IP provider’s quality and other business practices. At the tip of the iceberg it appears very simple to buy an IP and use it in your SoC design as required. However there are significant implications of using an IP from business as well as technical perspective; not all system companies have bought into the idea of using 3^rd party IP, barring some standard and common IP blocks from reputed suppliers. The standardization of IP blocks that go into most of the SoCs reduces cost for the overall value-chain of developing SoCs; however it can commoditize the stuff to an extent that it can start impacting the differentiated value of SoCs. Moreover, there are serious technical implications that need to be considered before using IP. There has been a significant change in the modern SoC ecosystem where the system companies are experiencing increasing need of customizing IP before their use in SoCs.

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