Using 3rd party IP in ASIC/SoC design

Procuring IP from third-party IP vendors looks to be a good option, but selecting and integrating that IP is rapidly becoming one of the biggest challenges in the SoC/ASIC industry. The success of any design depends on the careful selection of a reliable IP which sufficiently meets the product’s requirements.  Today, a significant portion of metal re-spins or redesign of chips is due to the fact that the IP is not properly selected, it has a bug inside, or it is not properly integrated into the design.

It is very common for IP to be procured from multiple vendors for a single design.  Working with each vendor requires careful management of technical, quality, business and legal issues. Taking hard-IP as an example, modern SoCs often integrate multiple high-speed serial interfaces, such as PCIe, USB, and XAUI; memory interfaces such as DDR; CPUs such as ARM, MIPS, and Tensilica; analog IP, including ADCs, DACs, PLLs, DLLs; and power management blocks, next to library and commodity IP that includes memories, I/Os, and standard cells.

Figure 1: Typical SoC components

For each component in a SoC, there are specialized IP vendors with proven track records providing the IP in the whole ecosystem. Though there are many benefits to having multiple sources in the market, it presents challenges for IP integration. To combat this, an IP selection and qualification process is needed. This process needs to be exhaustive and comprehensive while covering each phase of the ASIC design, from specification to GDSII.

Even a small oversight, such as realizing late in the tapeout phase that one of the IPs uses LVt devices, when only RVt/HVt devices have been budgeted for, can have a major impact on cost and schedule. A seemingly small mistake made in the due-diligence stage as performed early in the ASIC development cycle, can lead to excessive costs down the road when the issue is encountered.

Figure 2:  3^rd party IP use process

The figure above shows a comprehensive 4-stage IP Selection, Procurement, Qualification and Integration process, starting from day one when the project is still in the specification phase. Understanding customer requirements (or sometimes even driving them), selecting the right vendors, the right IP, conducting IP risk assessment and mitigation, as well as performing qualification and integration checks, are integral parts of any project. Each of these steps is composed of various checks and analysis in order to assure one thing: The right IP is being used in the right manner!

Each part of the 3^rd Party IP Use Process seen above is quite rigorous and requires a great amount of effort by the IP procurement and integration team.