IP SoC 17 France (December 6-7^th, 2017) was an exciting event !!!

Organized for over 20 years IP SoC is a 2 days event and is the worldwide face to face meeting between IP providers and IP consumers.

There were about 150 attendees, including session speakers and exhibitors. 78% of registered persons represented Engineering Design management, Engineering, and Corporate Management groups, confirming both high-technical and business levels of the event.

The countries representative distribution was just amazing with representatives from 6 continents, 20 countries :

The first day gives the floor to visionary talks analyzing the technical and business status over the last decades as well as defining the future trends in the IP ecosystem (from foundry to design to EDA and more ...), whereas the second day is an intensive designer day, addressing technical challenges in IP design.

Some highlights of the Executive Day...

It was the 20th anniversary of D&R... and as such a special introductory session could benefit from a visionary talk of Aart De Geus co-CEO and founder of Synopsys Inc., covering the evolution from computer era to the IoT world, presenting how it impacts EDA, led to the IP paradigm, and recognizing the role of D&R IP SoC community in the whole semiconductor industry.

Followed by an interview of Sir Robin Saxby, founder of Arm, recalling the first days of the IP history namely the early "Sharing", or "Reuse" of the best available processor which became definitively a "de facto standard" especially once associated with a "standard" bus and a powerful software offering around it thus creating the first "ecosystem" in this area. This talk was complemented by a talk delivered by Philip Burr, Marketing Director of Arm, who presented the roadmap of Arm® processors, covering market needs from large computing power to any IoT application including the license Free Design Start processor offering.

The next session emphasized the global contribution of 3 countries to the IP world (business view from China, design service from India and a "pure" IP provider view from USA)

• Mark Ma from Shanghai Jiatao Industrial Co., LTD. gave an overview of the tremendous deployment in China in the IC design world, presenting fascinating numbers both illustrating the government support and huge market opportunities.
• The Indian flavor in terms of design services including migration services, turnkey design solutions, "Application Specific SoC" design and dynamics in the semiconductor world was given by Eklovya Sharma - Head, Sankalp Semiconductor Marketing.
• Finally, one of the "eldest" IP provider, company namely CAST Inc., (Bill Finch, Senior VP) presented the history and vision of "small IP provider" the key ingredient of the IP business.

The end of the morning session was addressed to the foundries views, as foundries provide the technology root underlying the semiconductor world.

• The presence of Samsung (representing by Michael Choi, Project Leader of Data Converter IP Development) was exciting. As Samung is becoming an "open foundry", they will need an extended Alliance program, and therefore they will play an important role in the IP world. Establishing face to face relations with the IP community is therefore valuable.
• The next talk were directly related to the Grenoble location - the birth place of the FDSOI technology. Philippe Flatresse, Soitec - the SOI wafer manufacturer, pointed out that several decades of research were necessary to bring this alternative to the market, which is an exciting technology target due to its low power consumption that is now the market need. Gerd Teepe, Director of Marketing for Europe, GlobalFoundries Inc. illustrated this market penetration through the growing 22FDX® ecosystem.

The first afternoon session summarized the basic challenges for the IP world and the new hot trends.

• Concerning the basic challenges The everlasting need of strong analog IP offerings as the basis of any IP SoC design was illustrated by Mahesh Tirupattur, Executive VP Sales, Marketing & Operations, Analog Bits Inc., representative of the Indian designer community, whereas the broad IP portfolio provided by EDA vendors was illustrated by Synopsys Inc. speaker (Luis Laranjeira, R&D, Director Of Engineering).
• As a reminder, IP interconnection was one of the main challenges that the IP world encountered, and Charles Janac (CEO of Arteris) was the right person to trace the history and present the next challenges.
• As the two most exciting and "market wanted" IPs were presented:
  • Risc-V initiative by Roddy Urquhart - Director for EMEA Business Development, Codasip Ltd.
  • Embedded FPGA by Geoffrey Tate, CEO Flex Logic Technologies

A "New Business Model and Infrastructure" session emphasized the necessary Add On to a successful IP dissemination process.

• Arm (Philipp Burr, Director Product Management) pointed out that innovative and aggressive offers (up to license free processor kit) have to be made to let the worldwide broad community access easily the design opportunities especially for new IoT applications
• D&R (Gabriele Saucier, CEO & Founder) followed the same track showing that a next generation web based IP management infrastructure (from marketing to IP packaging and delivery) need to be used by providers to reach market penetration

A last session was devoted to the hottest application sector in Europe namely the Automotive IP and Software addressing safety requirement and eFPGA as a target.

• The contribution of the EDA vendor - Cadence Design Systems Inc. - in meeting ADAS SoC design safety challenges – presentation delivered by Rishi Chugh, Head of Marketing, Interface IP.
• The extension to verification and software by Infineon Technologies AG (Presenter - Singh Pankaj).
• Menta (Imen Baili) presented how automotive applications can benefit from eFPGA solutions.

Last but not least the day ended with a unique Wine Tasting Party with blind wine recognition following 3 tracks.

• Worldwide sparkling wine tasting animated by Chris Brown SST Microchip
• Californian wines sponsored by Analog Bits and animated by Mahesh Tirupattur
• French wines presented by D&R

The origin of the visionary speakers of this first day shows a balanced worldwide contribution to give out to the audience a global IP business view (shown below).

IP SoC 17 Designer Day

The IP SoC 17 Designer Day was a highly technical design forum with 22 contributions giving an opportunity to IP designers to share their experienced design skill and the most innovative design. Technical slides are posted and available when accessing the program and will allow you to get most of the details.

As an introduction Debbie Dekker from Arm pointed out the recognized value for a major player such as Arm to identify approved design centers which will tune and embed efficiently an IP in customer design. Thus completing the needed IP ecosystem. As an introduction Frederic Renoux from Dolphin Integration recalled that there is one prime challenge today in IP design namely the power reduction ... and claiming an intelligent approach.

The next 2 sessions focused on 2 hot topics:

• How low power design can be achieved and lead to successful implementations for IoT applications with contributions From SST-Microchip Technology, Synopsys and CSEM SA.
• How to embed security in your system design. With contributions from Inside Secure, Dolphin Integration Inc and Secure IC

The next sessions were fully devoted to IP and system design:

• A design methodology session addressed both system power management and IP configuration with ocntributions from University of Tuebingen, CSEM SA and Synopsys
• A highly specialized session was devoted to FDSOI specific design techniques and in fact gave some highlight about the European research project result (Things2Do project managed by Patrick Blouet from STMicroelectronics)
• An IP design session ranging from interface IP as the heart of the IP world with contributions of - LG Electronics, Extoll GmbH, to wireless IP from a New Zealand team and finally a microcontroller IP from CSEM
• An IP based system design session the main focus on which was vision system with the participation of Sensor to Image (GmbH) and Algodone.

The origin of the technical speakers of this second day show a majority of European speakers showing that Europe stays quite active reserach in Electronic design... even if the business aspect stays centered in US.