Even this deep into the era of IP and design reuse, it’s been my impression that things are not quite as far along as many in the industry would like you to believe. With that attitude in mind, I spoke with CAST CEO Hal Barbour, who convinced me otherwise, although with several caveats.

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Q: Are people still reluctant to buy IP?

Hal Barbour: There’s been a big change. There used to be fly-by-night IP companies, which were really services companies, so people were leery.

Over the last few years, however, people have pulled back from those attitudes. Some “IP” companies have gone out of business – they couldn’t survive on just selling data sheets – while the established suppliers have become more mature. Now people know who is and isn’t [a reliable supplier].

Q: Was that the case 10 years ago, or has it evolved over the last decade?

Barbour: I would say 10 years ago, everybody was still leery. They didn’t know if they could trust outside suppliers.

But time to market pressures have grown such that people found they couldn’t reinvent the wheel for lots of the IP used by their competitors, or other people doing similar projects, so they started to go outside for processors and peripheral devices such as USBs, and so forth.

There’s still some concern lingering today – it’s not completely gone – but you’ll find that customers are definitely a lot more knowledgeable about IP.

Q: Are there tools available for comparing and contrasting similar IP offerings? (more…)