SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Reusable Application Specific Intellectual Property Developers (Rapid) trade association is working with Synchronicity Inc. (Marlborough, Mass.), Sun Microsystems Inc. and EE Times to launch its Internet-based virtual-component (VC) catalog.

The catalog is due to go live on June 15 at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco and will include more than 200 components from more than 30 companies when it launches, Rapid said. The association expects many more companies to add cores once the catalog is up and running.

It is planned that the catalog and online search engine will reside primarily at EE Times Online, with access from other sites including Rapid's Web site.

Rapid members are providing the data for the online catalog pages, while EE Times will provide sales, marketing and advertising support through its print and Web publications. Synchronicity, a supplier of Internet/intranet-based design-management software to electronics and EDA companies, is donating the software, developing the database and implementing the search engine. Sun Microsystems is providing the server hardware and high-speed telephone lines for access.

To boost the number of cores included in the VC catalog, Rapid is inviting all intellectual-property (IP) core developers to enter their components at no cost for the first three months the catalog is online. Thereafter, becoming a member of Rapid will be required to remain listed. After DAC, participating companies will be able to edit, add and delete components directly online with secured-access passwords.

The DAC launch represents a slight delay from earlier plans incurred while Synchronicity worked to implement the Rapid database scheme and help populate it.

"The VC catalog is a project we have had an interest in developing for some time," said Mark Miller, vice president of marketing and business development at Synchronicity. "When Rapid asked us to participate in the partnership, we were thrilled to provide the technology and most up-to-date database infrastructure for the catalog. Our involvement ensures the VC catalog will be the cornerstone to helping companies locate and purchase IP."

According to Rapid, the catalog will offer the most comprehensive site for finding verified IP. The database will be searchable by a number of parameters, including text, vendor, functionality, feature size, industry part number and hardness. Additionally, users will be able to display search results and make direct comparisons between two VCs for price, compatibility and verification.

Other features to be added to the catalog later this year include the distribution of components via secure-access passwords and downloading capabilities for corporate intranets.

"System-on-chip technology is dependent on the success of the emerging IP business. By providing exposure for IP providers and giving designers access to verified IP, Rapid's VC catalog can propel this market. Our role in the program is to help that process by promoting it to a broad audience of IP providers and users," said Steve Weitzner, publishing director of EE Times. Weitzner said EE Times' cooperation with Rapid is not an exclusive deal.

"Other, similar catalogs have been discussed and even attempted; however, ours is and will remain the most comprehensive, freely accessible and up-to-date," said Tom Senna, marketing and business development director at LogicVision Inc. (San Jose) and vice chairman of Rapid.

One of those "similar catalogs" is that of Design & Reuse S.A. (D&R; Grenoble, France), which went live in October 1997 and is much more extensive than Rapid's catalog will be at its launch.

D&R claims to have information on more than 1,200 cores from about 80 vendors in its online catalog and about 800 registered users. However, it is believed that much of that information has been abstracted from vendors' Web sites by D&R, rather than entered into the database by the vendors.

Takeshi Fuse, IP strategy manager at Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. (San Jose) and co-chairman of the Rapid catalog working group, said, "We want to make the Rapid catalog the official catalog. We want to ensure the quality of what's in the catalog." To that end, he said, Rapid will employ a data administrator.

While Rapid is a not-for-profit trade association, D&R has been set up as a commercial enterprise by Gabriele Saucier, a professor at the Institute National Polytechnique de Grenoble. Both Rapid and D&R are offering their classification schemes for IP core types to the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance for adoption as a standard. They both also will offer free searches.

"We are willing to work with D&R," Fuse said. "We do not see ourselves as rivals. We've talked in the past, and we intend to keep talking. I regret there are two formats existing, but Rapid started on this a long time ago. We've defined the user requirements; we've got a good format and a good information set."