Design reuse is not a new concept. This is something that the software folks have been doing very effectively for decades. Naturally, it makes a lot of sense to create reusable designs in hardware too, and this is not something new either; companies have been trying to develop ASIC modules that can be used across projects. Over the years, this idea has been called by many names – portable design, intellectual property (IP), retargetable ASIC module, and so on, depending on the scenario. We will simply call it “IP” for our discussions here.
How is the design of hardware/ASIC IP different from how it is done by the software folks? What are the similarities? What are the challenges that are specific to ASIC IP design?
These are some of the questions that we will address in the forthcoming posts.
