By Sean Patrick Dean
Integrated System Design
Posted 03/22/01, 09:02:57 PM EDT

Santa Clara, CA - March 22, 2001 - At the IP/SoC Conference, sponsored by EE TImes and ISD Magazine, the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) highlighted the progress of its online Compliance System, which allows its virtual component (VC) members to create and view VSIA specification compliance reports for themselves and their customers.

According to Larry Cooke, the non-profit organization's technical marketing manager, the Compliance System aims to provide visibility of different VCs, a consistent way to compare VCs, and a measure of a VC's completeness.

The online Compliance System consists of a creator section and a viewer section. The creator section includes options for the degree of availability to the viewer. The Alpha version of just the creator section has been in testing with six member companies — Modelware, Inc.; Sciwork; VCX; ARM; Mentor Graphics; and Design and Reuse.

The Beta version will include both the creator and viewer components of the system, Cooke said.

Caroline O'Donnell, marketing manager at Virtual Component Exchange (VCX; Livingston, Scotland), discussed why VCX has implemented the VSIA VC Transfer Standard and became an Alpha user of the Compliance System. VCX has been a member of VSIA since 1999.

"The Compliance System allows companies to compare VCs much easier," said O'Donnell. "The adoption of standards will lead to overall market growth. It's worthwhile in the long term."

Through its website, VCX strives to handle the business and legal issues associated with the procurement of intellectual property (IP), whereas VSIA is concentrating on the technical issues of using third party IP. O'Donnell said that VCX works to improve VC transaction efficiency, security, and cost. VCX claims that it cuts procurement time in half.

Larry Rosenberg, VSIA technical committee chairman, outlined the successes of VSIA and future challenges and plans. On Monday, the organization announced its VC Attributes Standard, which defines the VSIA-compliant set of attributes to be used by VC users. In January, VSIA released the Taxonomy of Functional Verification for VC Development and Integration (VER 1 1.1).

"The role of VSIA is to define a set of deliverables that makes it easier for VC integration," said Rosenberg. "The SoC challenges are more sophisticated than originally articulated. There's a lot of work to be done."

Timothy O'Donnell, president of VSIA and president of Arm, Inc., urged audience members to contact the organization's Development Working Groups to help with developing the standards that will drive system-on-a-chip design. The VSIA challenges, he said, were to promote acceptance, adoption, and worldwide participation of standards.

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