IP licensing fosters design flexibility

By Warren Savage, IPextreme
November 19, 2007 - dspdesignline.com

Emerging automotive electronics design model "decouples" supplier choice from technology choice, while advancing industry standards

A significant new trend has been emerging in the automotive electronics industry over the past few years. Major semiconductor makers such as Freescale and Infineon are beginning to license some of their proprietary and standards-based IP through companies such as IPextreme. This arrangement is accelerating the adoption of these technologies across the entire automotive industry.

IP licensing represents a major paradigm shift in the automotive market in that it "decouples" the technology choice from the supplier choice. No longer is a particular technology "captive" to a particular supplier—allowing more flexibility in choosing suppliers and, thus, lowering costs with "the right solution for the right price."

In the past, manufacturers and Tier 1 integrators were locked into a certain technology that was only available from certain semiconductor providers. Now, automotive companies can select the technology they wish to use in their next-generation vehicles and instruct their supply base to license that IP.

Because automotive companies can select the technology they wish to use and instruct their supply base to license that IP, companies such as IPextreme are changing the electronic supply chain.

This model significantly reduces automaker and Tier 1 vendor time-to-market; improves the overall quality of products; and frees up vendor design resources so they can focus on their core technologies.

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