Virtual Components — from Research to Business

Abstract

The application of Virtual Components (IP modules) and reuse has already been accepted as a prerequisite for designing Systems-on-Chip in the near future or even today. Many topics related to reuse and Virtual Components are no longer of pure academic interest, they now have impact on product developments and business. Beyond that, Virtual Components are becoming a business of its own. The application of reuse and Virtual Components in real product designs together with the progress of technology leads to new challenges for research in that field.

This chapter gives an overview about the research activities as well as commercial applications related to Virtual Components. Starting with a survey of designins ¹ of Virtual Components in actual product developments the chapter will describe the application in different types of companies, the approach for applying Virtual Components in different countries and the key characteristics of today’s reuse projects.

Based on market research in the ASIC field the business related to Virtual Components will be analyzed. The discussion of research activities in the reuse field covers research work already applied in real life projects, hot topics in research on Virtual Components and reuse and what are the challenges for research in order the push reuse of IP. Examples include different levels of formal verification, behavioral descriptions, IP taxonomy etc.