Celebrating World Intellectual Property Day

LEGO^® is the world’s most famous toy brand. The experience of playing with these toys has endured over the years because of the innumerable possibilities they allow us: from simple textbook models to wherever our imagination might take us. We have always been driven by a motivation to reuse modular components in all facets of our lives that enable us to build things better and faster while reducing complexity, allowing us to focus our innovation on areas that matter most to us.

In semiconductor design, cost and complexity are closely intertwined.

Figure 1: Advanced node design cost [IBS Global Semiconductor Service Report Design Activities and Strategic Implications, July 2018]

Design and verification costs, as well as the length of design cycles, have risen dramatically as process nodes have advanced. IP allows for design scalability and product development schedules to be feasible in this situation.

From the simplest building blocks like GPIOs to the most advanced high-speed interfaces, IP subsystems are the lifeblood of the chipmaking ecosystem. A key enabler for IP has been the collaboration between industry and academia in the creation of standards and protocols for interfaces. IEEE, JEDEC, PCI-SIG, the CXL Consortium, and the UCIe Consortium, to name a few, drive some of the key definitions and compliance specifications and ensure the interoperability of interface IP.

In the processing world, Arm^® leads the way with its wide offering of CPUs and interconnects. Other alternate providers are making their entry as well. Specialized accelerators for DSP, such as Cadence’s Tensilica and Neo AI accelerator IP, aim to accelerate these portions of SoC,s too.

Verification IP complements the design IP. Without a comprehensive verification and validation environment, no design can succeed. The investment to build this capability in-house is prohibitive even for the most advanced companies today.

Figure 2: IP Accelerates Customer Designs 

The IP spectrum covers a wide gamut to meet all needs. Like the most common 2x1 Lego brick to the rarest 14-karat gold Bionicle Lego piece, IP ranges from the simplest RTL block of code to the most complex custom physical designs. On this World Intellectual Property Day, we take a moment to celebrate all those who make this ecosystem possible in order to bring us the wonderful designs that make technology a reality in our day-to-day lives!