Then, I asked for the IP vendors themselves to respond to a set of questions. Here's one letter to the editor:

We've heard that the IP business is a total lost cause each of the last 14 years we've been successfully in business.

The fact that you and the industry are all still talking about "IP" proves it's essentialness: any design process aid so regularly getting such slanderous descriptions -- ranging from "risky" and "troublesome" to "totally worthless" -- wouldn't still be around if designers didn't really need it.

To think that IP might not be necessary because many firms find it difficult to profitably sell suggests a naivety about how people do designs these days. Your power as a writer doesn't come from inventing new words, but rather from the unique and interesting ways of combining existing words into useful articles, and it's similar for SoC developers. Today's designers are successful by focusing on those elements of a design that differentiate their product from the competition, not by reinventing a wheel. And, fortunately for the IP industry, today's designs contain more and more wheels.

Any business model that works for IP must be based on remembering that IP's role is to help designers. It is indeed challenging to design a quality core that really works and can be profitably resold instead of exploding into a big new design services experience with each new customer. It is hard to build a support network that gives quick, knowledgeable assistance in the eleventh hour -- it's never the fifth, or sixth, hour -- but it can be done.

IP is only a nightmare when the designer consumes spicy, poorly-cooked cores just before bedtime. Work with a proven, quality provider in a reasonable timeframe, and you'll have sweet dreams. Checkboxes don't measure IP quality but success does: IP suppliers that provide trash fail their customers and simply don't last.

Using IP in some form is probably the single factor common to 99 percent of your readers. Do you think your time on the golf course will help them sort out all the junk and dubious suppliers; help them learn when and how to use IP to their advantage rather than their peril; and help them read past the news releases and slick websites to find what really works? That sounds like a good job for a journalist.

Regards,
Hal Barbour
President -- CAST, Inc.
11 Stonewall Court
Woodcliff Lake, NJ 07677
Ph. 201-391-8300 Ext 111
Fax 201-391-8694
Skype - halbarbour