Insight teams with inSilicon to resell FPGA cores

Insight teams with inSilicon to resell FPGA cores
By Crista Souza, EBN
March 19, 2001 (12:36 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010319S0042

As the intellectual property industry struggles to find a profitable business model, one newly forged partnership may help pave the way.

Seeking a broader sales channel than it can support internally, inSilicon Inc. has given semiconductor distributor Insight Electronics Inc. an exclusive franchise to resell its cores. In doing so, the IP developer will for the first time be able to address the FPGA market-a move that may bring a lower revenue payoff per design, but far more designs each year than ASICs.

Under the deal, to be announced this week at IP/SOC 2001 in Santa Clara, Calif., Insight's design services group will modify netlists of inSilicon's ASIC cores to work in FPGAs from Xilinx Inc., help OEMs design them into specific parts, then provide order fulfillment and logistics support.

Customers will pay an upfront fee per project for each core used, but not back-end royalties. The companies will split the revenue.

Insight, one of t he few component distributors equipped to do circuit-level design, is taking that capability a step further by adding third-party IP to its franchise offering.

"We started talking a year ago about how we could bridge the gap between the incredible amount of IP out there and the sales channel we have as a distributor, and combine it with our design expertise from our relationship with Xilinx," said Greg Provenzano, president and chief executive of Insight, San Diego.

Electronic design automation service companies, the traditional distributors of IP, address a narrower customer base, and don't have built-in silicon sales and logistics operations, Provenzano noted.

"This is the first model in the IP space that offers a start-to-finish solution to the customer base," he said. "The reality is, there's no one else who can do this right now."

Independent IP developers-with a few notable exceptions-have struggled to gain credibility, despite the trend of using predesigned and preverified cores to sav e time. And while industry groups have come a long way in lowering design and legal barriers, most companies lack the where-withal to market, sell, and support their products.

Consequently, most OEMs still create basic building blocks that add nothing unique to their systems. According to a survey by Dataquest Inc., San Jose, 58% of programmable logic users employ internally developed cores, while slightly more than a third source cores from third parties.

"One of the keys to this business is creating IP for which you don't have to ship an applications engineer with each design," said Robert Nalesnik, vice president of marketing at inSilicon, San Jose.

inSilicon is cited by analysts as one of a handful of IP suppliers able to manage a diverse product line. In fiscal 2000, the company posted revenue of $25 million and made a profit in the fourth quarter. The company's focus to date, however, has been in the ASIC market, where customer support requirements have tapped out its resources.

"The su pport issue has been one of the reasons we've been hesitant to expand into FPGAs," Nalesnik said. "We needed to find someone who really understands the issues, and is large enough to put in the necessary investment and make it profitable."

The IP distribution deal is one way to bring independent core developers and small OEMs together in a way that benefits all parties, according to analysts. "I don't think there's ever going to be a panacea for the ills of the IP business, but it does help just to get the IP out to a larger number of companies," said analyst Steve Cullen at In-Stat Group in Boston.

"When you talk about putting in a number of cores per device, license negotiations alone strain a company's resources. This pairing makes it possible to go out to a distributor they're probably already doing business with, and have one-stop shopping," Cullen said.

Insight benefits as well by offering a value-added service that allows it to get deeper into the customer, he said.

For Xilinx-which de rives as much as 90% of its FPGA revenue from distribution sales-the partnership will help accelerate the adoption of its high-end parts as ASIC alternatives, the companies said.

Avnet Inc. tried to launch a similar distribution model two years ago using its ASIC design relationship with LSI Logic Corp., but the deal fell through.

Insight, which last year got the nod from LSI Logic to be an authorized ASIC design house, said it hopes to expand the relationship to include franchised IP, but added that it would delicately approach such an arrangement.

"It's not our intent to put together an IP-straight-to-the-foundry model and compete with our suppliers," Provenzano said. "It makes the most sense to do it this way now, because we have the expertise in Xilinx, and then look at whether it makes sense to expand it to LSI Logic."

Insight is optimizing inSilicon's USB 1.1 device controller and 10/100 Ethernet media-access controller, which are expected to be available in April. The distributor plans to support inSilicon's full library, rolling out roughly one core a month, said Mark Buckhalt, director of IP for Memec Core, Insight's design unit.

Insight further aims to persuade OEM customers to market the cores they develop internally. "OEMs generate a tremendous amount of IP, and they need a way to profit from it. Right now they don't have a vehicle to get it out to the rest of the customer base," Provenzano said.