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For many years, people have been talking about configuring processor IP cores, but especially with growing interest in the open RISC-V ISA, there is much more talk about customization. So, what is the difference?

A simple analogy is to think of ordering a pizza. With most pizzerias, you have standard bases and a choice of toppings from a limited list. You can configure the pizza to the sort of taste you would like based on the standard set of options available.

Processor IP vendors have typically offered some standard options to their customers, such as optional caches, tightly coupled memories, and on-chip debug, so that they could combine them and provide the customers with suitable configurations for their needs. While doing so, the core itself remains the same, or has very limited variations. Certainly, the instruction set, register set, and pipeline would remain the same, and only optional blocks such as caches are allowed to vary.

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