Systems-on-a-Chip: Intellectual Property and Licensing Issues
Fred M. Greguras There is an accelerating trend in the electronics industry toward implementing an entire electronic system on a single chip through the integration of multiple, reusable, virtual components including both digital and analog circuitry. These systems perform specific functions (i.e. digital signal processor graphics controllers) and are sometimes interchangeably referred to as intellectual property (“ip cores embedded” or “ip building blocks”). This trend toward such semiconductor systems has important licensing implications. Because of widely adopted industry standards, standardized physical components can be rapidly and easily mixed on a printed circuit board (“PCB”) to create an electronic system of...