Stale IP is beginning to rear its ugly head.  It’s like having too many books on your bookshelf – always an issue in my house.  Where do you put the new ones?  Which ones do you keep?  What do you do with the ones you don’t want to keep?

I (Liz Massingill) recently polled some experts in the industry to get their stance on stale IP.  Over the next few weeks I’ll share their views with you.

I’ll start with Harrison Beasley, Manager of the Technical Working Groups at Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).  Here’s what he had to say:

Liz: Stale IP – what is it?

Harrison: IP becomes stale when the underlying code is out of date.  This could be due to changes in a specification, errors found in use, soft IP not being updated, etc.  My assumption is that stale IP will not perform the task for which it was created.

Liz: What’s so bad about it?

Harrison:  Using stale IP could lead to non-functional silicon, tape out delays, end product failures, etc.

Liz: How do we prevent it from being stale?

Harrison: For internal IP, code checks before layout, during timing analysis, during verification, and before final tape-out help ensure the latest IP version is used.  For third party IP, similar rules apply, but the user must coordinate with the IP Supplier to ensure changes are promulgated to the user.

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