IP360: SNPS takes page from CDNS playbook

This week, in the early hours just prior to the opening of DAC, Synopsys announced a new initiative to reshape the world of IP. It’s called the IP Accelerated initiative, but it might as well as be called IP360. Just as Cadence’s EDA360 initiative was meant to reshape the design tool flow in the image of Cadence, Synopsys’ IP360 is meant to reshape the IP use and integration flow in the image of Synopsys.

And where EDA360 had three parts: System, SoC, and Silicon Realization, so IP360 has three parts: IP Prototyping, Architecting, and Integration. More specifically, the IP Accelerated initiative includes new IP prototyping kits with reference designs for IP preloaded into a HAPS-DX prototyping system, software development kits with processor subsystem reference designs and configurable models of DesignWare IP, and customized IP subsystems to augment Synopsys’ IP portfolio.

In other words, it’s all about “one-stop shopping,” per my September 30th conversation with Synopsys’ John Koeter, VP of Marketing for IP & Prototyping. “Synopsys has a broad portfolio of high-quality IP,” he said, and that combined with “our development kits for prototyping and software developmental” means that if you know how to reach Synopsys, you’re set and ready to go.

Importantly, however, the IP Accelerated initiative also includes access to Synopsys experts to “assist designers in creating and customizing IP subsystems for their specific application requirements, as well as integrating the subsystems into their SoC,” per the company’s June 2nd Press Release.

Koeter put it this way: “We allow customers to configure IP, to tweak reference designs, to change parameters, and quickly remap into the prototype. IP Accelerated is about SDKs, PDKs, and HDKs, and also [importantly], the new initiative is about integration.

“We have always had a healthy services business at Synopsys and today, as we are hearing more and more from our customers that they want customized subsystems, we see that we need to offer more than just standard, configurable IP. We also have to offer integration services.

“Customers say that as they get sucked up the food chain, they’re losing some of the necessary detailed expertise, so they want to hire Synopsys experts to partner with their experts. And that combination, our IP expertise with their SoC expertise, means [they will get their products to market] faster.

“The IP Accelerated initiative is about better productivity, better predictability, and better design services and products, all of which means the absolute dollars flowing [from customers’ projects] will be higher.”

In terminology that sounds pretty familiar, Synopsys’ new initiative is a comprehensive set of products and services that the company says will meet the needs of their IP customers, a comprehensive IP360 offering that promises Productivity, Predictability, and Profitability.

Absolutely verbatim in scope and vocabulary, a page from the EDA360 playbook.

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Design Services vs. Customers …

Per John Koeter when asked if Synopsys is competing with its customers in all of this, “No, never once have I heard a customer say that we are competing with them. The semiconductor industry as a whole is growing at 6 percent per year, with more and more resources being spent on software and so forth. The only solution for customers [facing these challenges] is to ask us to do more to help them. This is the absolute opposite of competing with our customers!”

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Tags: Cadence, EDA360, IP Accelerated initiative, IP360, John Koeter, Synopsys

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