IP protection based on trust, technology

Richard Goering, EE Times
(02/08/2006 4:06 PM EST)
 
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — New technology such as tagging, watermarking and fingerprinting will aid silicon intellectual property (IP) protection, but it's no substitute for trust, noted panelists at the DesignCon 2006 conference here Tuesday (Feb. 7).

Panelists were generally optimistic about the ability of IP creators to protect their property. But disagreement arose when a Synplicity representative spoke from the audience about his company's ability to synthesize encrypted IP, and panel and audience members insisted users don't want encrypted IP.

Panel moderator John Barber, analyst at Gartner Dataquest, noted that the silicon IP market is currently around $1.8 billion this year. He said the market enjoyed 16 percent growth in 2005 and expects 22 percent growth in 2006. But IP protection, he said, is "the key issue why the IP industry is not exploding as it should."

Gary Delp, CTO of the VSI Alliance and distinguished engineer at LSI Logic, said the key challenge is to protect the value of the IP. "If you perfectly protect it, nothing bad will happen, but nothing good can happen," he noted.