Freescale has developed a business model and partnered with US start-up IPextreme, which specialises in packaging and supporting complex IP blocks, to improve uptake of its FlexRay automotive networking IP core.
Freescale has previously stated that FlexRay’s complexity needs considerable effort to ensure standardised implementations throughout the industry, and IPextreme’s role is to expand the market more rapidly.
“Big semiconductor companies are realising they need to get IP on the market to complement their chip business, and they’re not so good at that,” said Trent Poltronetti, v-p of marketing at IPextreme.
“Freescale wants to seed the market to create demand for FlexRay parts,” he said.
IPextreme said its business model should attract companies that have to develop large, complex SoCs rapidly, re-using lots of IP blocks in the process, and who need to minimise the risk of re-spins.
CEO Warren Savage said that IP blocks of any complexity must be proven in silicon, and must be accompanied by tools and comprehensive documentation to aid their integration in a design.
“Our biggest value is in more complicated subsystems,” said Savage. “With chips getting bigger and bigger, the amount of IP going onto them is just exploding. The people doing these SoC chips are probably lying awake at night wondering which of the IP blocks they bought is going to force them to do a re-spin.”
IPextreme works by encapsulating the core IP in an ‘XPack’. As well as generating implementation information that feeds into a customer’s EDA tool flow, one output is an XML description that can be used in tools that comply with the Spirit standard for IP re-use.
www.ip-extreme.com
www.freescale.com