SoC cost, complexity driving IP collaboration

George Leopold, EE Times
(04/15/2008 4:50 PM EDT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Growing complexity and the staggering costs associated with designing systems-on-chip are forcing companies to seek collaboration on a variety of intellectual property issues. Chip industry executives and IP vendors speaking at a IP symposium here on Tuesday (April 15) agreed that greater collaboration is needed on issues like design reuse and standards.

The key drivers are complex designs that are gradually moving to 45-nm feature sizes and skyrocketing costs associated with chip design and generating internal IP. Company engineers estimated the cost of some SoC designs has soared to $100 million per device.

"We need intense innovation in the IP industry [and] intense collaboration," said Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel Corp.'s SoC Enabling Group.

Chip makers are coping with skyrocketing R&D costs by seeking more IP partners. At the same time, they want to expand their IP licensing business to recoup some of their R&D investment. But some experts said greater collaboration is stymied by the poor quality of some IP blocks and fragmented industry standards.

"Only a small number [of IP providers are] viable and have the deep pockets needed to provide quality," said Peter Hirt, manager of IP procurement and partnerships at STMicroelectronics. Maintaining quality is a challenge, and the quality of IP providers "is not there beyond the top tier of companies," Hirt said.

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