Core Sample
IP for Increased Productivity

The preparation starts weeks in advance. Whole grains are stone-ground - the resulting flour combined with honey extracted from backyard beehives over a period of months. The dough is then pressed and baked on hand-forged pans in wood-fired ovens until a fine golden crust appears that can be crushed into flakes of exactly the right consistency. After cooling, the flakes are poured into handmade pottery bowls, fired the previous week after being slung from native clay dug from the local riverbed. Finally, right before breakfast, milk from cows raised on grain grown in your own field is poured over the mixture. Making your own breakfast cereal can be a long and arduous task. But when you're done, all the weeks of preparation, expert handling, and expense give you something that resembles, well, the breakfast cereal you can buy in a box at the local supermarket.

How do you decide what to buy and what to develop yourself? The best dividing line is differentiation. Any part of your design that does not differentiate your product from your competitor's should be fair game for IP. The most common blocks that fall into this category are those that are standards-based. You're probably not going to beat your competition by having a better USB, Ethernet, or PCI interface than theirs. Likewise, as long as your DDR or DDR2 memory interface works reliably, it probably won't be the reason customers buy or don't buy your product. Engineering time you invest in re-inventing these important functions is time you could have spent making your product better, or time you could have been on the market capturing additional market share. [more]

ANNOUNCEMENTS Join Mentor Graphics at DAC To see the latest Verification solutions in action, please join Mentor Graphics in booth #1800 at DAC 2005 (Anaheim Convention Center, June 13-16) featuring demonstrations from Questa™, ModelSim® and 0-In®. On Tuesday, June 14 join us for a brief discussion on SystemVerilog and its importance as the leading standard for today's complex verification challenges. Complimentary beer and wine will be provided. Seats are limited so be sure to register today. Find a better job. Browse FPGA Journal’s new job listings to find challenging and rewarding opportunities with the FPGA industry’s top companies. Journal Jobs is specifically for FPGA professionals – more of what you’re looking for, less of what you’re not. Browse now! Hire the best FPGA talent in the industry with FPGA Journal Job Listings. Starting this month you can reach 30,000 active FPGA professionals by advertising your FPGA-related positions in Journal Jobs. Click here for info.