The Integrated IP Subsystem: A Converging SoC Solution

The consumer device market is witnessing incredible market space convergence between mobile handheld, automotive, and home electronics. Internet Protocol (IP) vendors, engineers, and system design engineers face a multitude of challenges when designing and developing integrated circuits (ICs), systems, or subsystems for the next great portable device. The next cell phone, for instance, will not only be a multimedia player, but also a device that plays, stores, captures, and sends data "24-7" - whenever and wherever a user wants. Such flexible functionality requires hundreds, even thousands, of embedded systems and subsystems to perform invisible work. With so much responsibility resting on these subsystems, the time has come for the industry to re-evaluate various IP design strategies and methodologies.