Chinese companies favoring soft IP

Mike Clendenin, EE Times
(10/30/2006 10:11 AM EST)

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Chinese companies ready to buy intellectual property blocks are favoring design-ins with soft cores rather than hard cores. This is pushing IP vendors to loosen up about delivering RTL code to Chinese customers.

The development is occurring as Chinese companies become more proficient at handling the more design-intensive soft IP, said Chu Lung, president of Asia-Pacific operations for Cadence Design Systems. "Perhaps before, because they did not know how to deal with the soft cores, they would just go to the foundry and use the hard cores," the executive said. "But more and more, as the engineers gain experience, people are using the soft cores in their designs."

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