Analog intellectual property

Abstract

There is considerable controversy as to whether or not the trade in analog intellectual properties (IP) will ever represent a viable business opportunity. One school of thought suggests that analog design will always be too specialized to constitute a major market; another school of thought says this will be big business if certain nagging technical problems are solved. While the demand for analog interface components is high, the ability of IP creators to render it in a tradable format is limited. And the ability of digital design teams to successfully utilize analog IPs - without a considerable amount of handholding - is similarly limited. EDA tools here are looked upon as both culpable and offering the best hopes for the future.This panel of experts - representing analog designers, analog EDA tool providers, silicon foundries and analog IP vendors - bring their own points of view on some of the business and technology issues which need to be resolved to provide the context for analog IP development and trade. Among the open questions:Is IP created and validated within the design environment for re-use a more productive approach than imported IP? How many 'traditional' analog designers would admit they are still using kit parts and breadboards - maybe even SPICE and manual IC layout techniques - today in their every-day job?What CAD tools are needed to help analog designers? Are newly emerging EDA technologies, designed to enhance analog design productivity, maturing rapidly enough to be accepted by designers?What is the future of analog designs at the very low voltage-swings coming with sub-100nm CMOS?Though silicon foundries need to process a wide set of external IP offerings in order to allow their users to build complete systems, are foundries seeing enough activity in analog IP designs to justify specialized fab runs or the kind of process tuning that would allow analog and digital IPs to coexist on the same chip?How likely - and how soon - can we get to analog IP development and trade?