Chapter 1. Introduction
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1.2
Intellectual Property Cores
With the advancement of the embedded systems market, the complexity of many designs
has increased since an even wider variety of peripherals and components had to be
supported. FPGAs play a major role in this advancement since the flexibility they offer
allows the engineer to constantly adapt and improve his designs in order fit to different
circumstances. Many modules designed and created in HDLs , are often created for a
similar purpose. The ease of use offered by software allows users to easily share and even
sell their work, in this case software described hardware. This gave rise to the IP-core
market.
IP-cores are modules written in a hardware description language implementing a certain
circuit. They can be reused and acquired either commercially or free of charge and can
be used as an embedded feature in another design. The increasing complexity of the
designs has rendered the usage of IP-cores a viable alternative[
]. One can simply acquire
an IP-core and use it at will in his work. For example one can buy a random number
generator and use it as is, in an implementation for network security. The advantages
of using IP-cores are huge, as they are a solid answer to the problem of time-to-market
reduction, which requires the fastest possible design and creation of a project. This is
achieved because by using a preprogrammed and pretested module, there is no need of
designing and debugging.
IP-cores in the electronic design industry have had a profound impact on the design of
systems on a chip. By licensing a design multiple times, an IP core licensor spreads
the cost of development among multiple chip makers. IP cores for standard processors,
interfaces, and internal functions have enabled chip makers to put more of their resources
into developing the differentiating features of their chips. As a result, chip makers have
developed innovations more quickly.
The licensing and use of IP-cores in chip design came into common practice in the 1990s.
There were many licensors and also many foundries competing on the market. Today,
the most widely licensed IP-cores are from Synopsys, Imagination Technology, Cadence
Design and ARM Holdings[
Typically IP-cores are offered as Soft cores or Hard cores. Soft cores are offered as
synthesizable RTL designs, usually in a HDL such as Verilog or VHDL. IP cores are