Peter Clarke, EETimes
2/21/2011 6:36 AM EST
LONDON – Chip foundries provide more design intellectual property (IP) to fabless chip companies than the IP core licensors whose principal business it is, according to the 2010 fabless ecosystem survey conducted by a university professor for the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) industry body.
Silicon foundries are responsible for, on average, 18 percent of the design IP cores in chips, followed by 16 percent, which come from third-party licensing firms. The leading source of design blocks is the fabless chip companies themselves, which author 66 percent of the design blocks, the survey found.