IP-SoC 2017: IP Innovation, Foundries, Low Power and Security

The 20[SUP]th[/SUP] IP-SoC conference will be held in Grenoble, France, on December 6-7, 2017. IP-SoC is not just a marketing fest, it’s the unique IP centric conference, with presentations reflecting the complete IP ecosystem: IP suppliers, foundries, industry trends and applications, with a focus on automotive. It will be also the celebration of Design & Reuse 20[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary, and the conference program is very high level, with people like Aart De Geus, chairman and Co-CEO of Synopsys or Sir Robin Saxby, the founder of ARM, presenting keynotes to start the conference.

You probably know Charles Janac, CEO, ArterisIP, the chairman of the session “The Past and the Next Decade Vision”. If you remember, he was CEO of Arteris when the company was acquired by Qualcomm in 2013 for several hundred million dollars… but, in fact, only the Network-on-Chip (NoC) IP portfolio was acquired and Arteris became ArterisIP, still developing and selling NoC IP.

In this session, Mark Ma will give a review of China IP to IC industry in 2017, Eklovya Sharma (Sankalp Semiconductor) will tell how he expects “Changing dynamics in semiconductor industry” and Bill finch from Cast will share his experience about the “Reusable IP Revolution and How a Small Company Took Advantage”… Last year, Bill Finch has given a presentation at IP-SoC “Back to the Future. The End of IoT”, and I admit that it was provocative, but I loved it! The presentation summary was: The term Internet of Things is the most over used, over hyped, mis-used and mis-understood phrase of the last few years. It now has so many meanings that it has become useless to describe anything worthwhile. As designers of IP and electronic systems we need to refocus on what we want to accomplish going forward. As always, it’s about customer needs and long term benefits. I will certainly attend to Bill’s presentation this year.

If a business need an ecosystem to grow and develop, this is certainly the IP business. And foundries are with EDA a very strategic part of this ecosystem. That’s why the “Foundry Vision” session is dedicated to IP friends like Samsung, GlobalFoundries and Soitec. There is a clear focus about FDSOI technology, as a reminder, Soitec is the #1 SOI wafer provider and GF will talk about FDXcellerator and 22FDX ecosystem. Don’t expect me to complain about this FDSOI focus as I have written numerous blogs, along with other at Semiwiki like Paul Mc Lellan, to introduce FDSOI technology to our readers in 2012-2013, even before the technology being adopted by Samsung and GlobalFoundry as a mainstream solution, complementary with more power-hungry FinFET technology. In FDSOI we trust, especially for battery powered applications, in pure digital or RF IC!

There will be other sessions dealing with IP ecosystem, like “From IP to SoC: What is the Trend” or “Automotive IP and Software”. You will hear about Analog IP from Mahesh Tirupatur with Analog Bits, one of the most talented IP vendor dealing with highly complex IP, from engineering standpoint, or Interconnect IP from Charles Janac (ArterisIP). Embedded FPGA will be honored by no less than two vendors, Flex Logix Technologies and Menta as Imen Baili (Menta) will explain why “eFPGA is the key solution for Automotive embedded systems”.

You should stay up to Thursday 7[SUP]th[/SUP] , as the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] day is very busy with very interesting topics, in these seven sessions:

– –Power Management and IoT vision (Microchip, Synopsys and CSEM)

– –Security (Inside Secure, Dolphin Integration and Secure IC)

– –Design methodology, Innovative IP in FD-SOI Technology, IP SoC design and System design

IP-SoC 2017 is clearly this kind of high level conference where complexes engineering topics are addressed by industry experts, not just a marketing fest!

IP-SoC conference will be located on December 6-7 in Hôtel EUROPOLE, 29 rue Pierre-Sémard, Grenoble Grenoble, France, you can register here

See you on Wednesday 6[SUP]th[/SUP] December in Grenoble

From Eric Esteve from IPNEST