News & Analysis
IP99: Industry rallies to trade IP online
Peter Clarke
11/1/1999 10:24 AM EST
LIVINGSTON, Scotland— The promise of easy access to intellectual property (IP) cores over the Internet will come to the IP99 Europe conference here this week, as catalog providers and standards bodies announce they are collaborating on a new standard for exchanging IP information. The idea is to let a user issue a single query that's automatically routed to multiple catalogs and IP suppliers, greatly simplifying what today can be an arduous search.
Meanwhile, the Virtual Component Exchange (VCX) will show the first prototype of its own online tools for listing virtual components, along with a business model definition and standard contract configuration. VCX will also announce that several new companies are joining, including EDA market leader Synopsys Inc.. And Mentor Graphics Corp. and Synopsys will announce online access to their OpenMore assessment program.
The Internet-based IP standards initiative is spearheaded by the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2), in cooperation with VCX, Web-based design management provider Synchronicity, the Rapid trade organization and IP catalog provider Design and Reuse. The Nokia Research Center in Bochum, Germany, will head up a pilot program to test-drive the standardized query mechanism.
Together, these companies and organizations will develop tools and standards that adapt Si2's Electronic Component Information Exchange QuickData specifications to virtual components. The effort leverages the recently announced virtual component transfer specification from the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance, as well as VCX's work on business and legal IP exchange issues.
When complete, a user's query will be automatically routed to a "registry" of all IP providers that adapt the Quick Data specifications. Once candidate virtual components are identified, additional information such as openly available data sheets can be requested, as well as protected assets such as simulation models and testbenches that can be accessed within the VCX arena.
"If I only have to do one query, using one standard interface, then I don't have to go to each supplier and learn how to use their database and query mechanism," said Don Cottrell, vice president of technology at Si2. The QuickData specification was first released in June for packaged components, and some 85 suppliers have already signed onto that effort.
"Everybody wants to get involved in Internet commerce and IP exchange," said Larry Rosenberg, chair of the technical committee of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA). "The real problem is that a bunch of good people worldwide are each trying to do their own thing. We were dangerously close to a real Tower of Babel."
One of the IP users pushing hardest for the QuickData effort is Lucent Technologies. "We want to speed up the search and selection of IP," said Ed Hutson, project manager for global component information at Lucent. "With a standard in place, we'll be able to multitask a selection query to as many suppliers as are registered to the standard."
Design and Reuse and Rapid have been longtime rivals in terms of whose taxonomy and database formats should hold sway in the nascent IP-core trading industry. With the announcement of the pilot program, both of them, along with VCX, have agreed to use a common XML-based front end that could reduce the significance of back-end differences.
"XML is about putting tags onto anything," said Gabriele Saucier, chairman of the board of D&R. "We plan to put in place XML tags to see how it works. For us it is an education and research story. We don't have to change anything about our database, our Yellow Pages or anything else. We have never said we would allow unlimited searching," Saucier added. "That will continue to be restricted to our members."
Over the next eight months the pilot program is due to demonstrate example implementations of standardized Internet-based IP core queries and responses among VC users, catalog operators and core providers. The pilot is targeting the Date 2000 conference and exhibition in Paris next March and the Design Automation Conference, DAC 2000, in Los Angeles next June, for key demonstrations.
Nokia Research Center has agreed to play the role of the user of IP cores and will produce queries to, and evaluate the responses from, multiple distributed VC libraries both within and outside the company. Software to support the generation of VC queries and the handling of responses will be provided by Synchronicity, Design and Reuse, Rapid and VCX.
Further, VCX will provide additional tools for controlling access to protected information and for reducing the business and legal overhead in a VC transaction. The group is looking for other system companies to join Nokia as representatives of the IP-core user community.
The Si2 Electronic Component Information Exchange (Ecix) program has previously concentrated on the development of a standardized electronic format for data sheet information for packaged components. But the scheme includes XML-based Internet technology that other virtual component catalog builders would find useful, said Andy Travers, chief executive officer of VCX.
'Standard language'
"What this program is all about is showing that the [QuickData] technology is just as applicable to IP as to real components," said Si2's Cottrell. The primary thing that needs to be done, he said, is to bring in definitions from the VSIA virtual component transfer specification to help create a "standard language" upon which queries can be based.
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