Silicon IP And Successful DFM

The System-on-Chip (SoC) model has evolved as a method to help design productivity keep pace with the ever-increasing capabilities of silicon manufacturing. The SoC design style employs design reuse, and reuse allows IP to be shared among many designs and across companies. The combination of SoC and the fabless semiconductor model have resulted in the disaggregating of IC manufacturing, leading to the specialization model shown in Figure 1. Where all these functions historically existed only within vertically integrated companies, now horizontally specialized companies provide manufacturing capability and supply IP.