Press Release

Sonics, Nokia, Texas Instruments, MIPS and UMC Launch OCP-IP to Standardize IP Core Socket Interface

Ian Mackintosh to Head New Semiconductor Industry Consortium Driving the Shift to "Plug and Play" SoC Design

PORTLAND, ORE. — December 3, 2001 — Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) today announced the launch of a new semiconductor industry standards organization whose mission is to administer the support, promotion and enhancement of a complete intellectual property (IP) core socket for “plug and play” System-on-Chip (SoC) design.

Sonics, Inc. (Mountain View, CA) is placing its Open Core Protocol interface specification that defines complete IP core communications requirements (data, control and test flows) into the organization as “community source” property along with supporting “industrial grade” tools and technology. In addition to Sonics, those companies confirming their intent to be OCP-IP founding members and initial Governing Steering Committee participants are: Nokia [NYSE: NOK], Texas Instruments [NYSE: TXN], MIPS Technologies [NasdaqNM: MIPS] and United Microelectronics Corporation [NYSE: UMC].

OCP-IP is an independent, non-profit organization funded by annual membership dues. Its three-tiered membership structure—Governing Steering Committee members, Sponsor members and Community members—brings significant benefits for IP companies, integrated device manufacturers, system companies, fabless semiconductor suppliers and design houses. The annual dues for Community membership, which affords free access to all products and services, is $10,000 per year. Membership benefits include eligibility for working groups, access to community source products and services and participation in certification “plug-fests.” A Membership Application and supporting information is available now on the organization's Web site at www.ocpip.org.

Ian Mackintosh, a 25-year veteran of the semiconductor and electronic design automation (EDA) industries, is OCP-IP's president. Mackintosh is an ASIC pioneer with background in semiconductor design, software development and business management. He has actively served on industry standards organizations and is currently the chair for the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) working group on intellectual property protection. He formerly served as a Steering Committee Member for the Virtual Component Exchange (VCX). Since 1980, Mackintosh has held various senior management positions with National Semiconductor, VLSI Technology (now Philips), PMC-Sierra, Mentor Graphics and start-up companies.

“The time is right for an organization fully dedicated to the issue of ‘plug and play’ SoC design and promotion of an industry-standard IP core socket,” said Mackintosh. “If complex SoC design is to become a mainstream engineering discipline, the semiconductor industry must adopt a common IP core interface that works with all the different bus structures and interconnect technologies to facilitate reuse and improve time-to-market. The Open Core Protocol is a complete specification that will be available to the OCP-IP members and has been commercially adopted and proven in production designs by world-class companies such as Broadcom [NasdaqNM: BRCM], Intel (VxTel) [NasdaqNM: INTC] and PMC-Sierra [NasdaqNM: PMCS].”

Open Core Protocol Fulfills Vendors' IP Core Socket Requirements
Backing of OCP-IP by several major SOC design and manufacturing vendors consolidates support around the Open Core Protocol as the definitive specification for an industry-standard IP core socket (see attached OCP-IP testimonials). Sonics has spent more than five years developing the Open Core Protocol. It donated an early version of the interface specification to the VSIA in 1997 for use in what has become the Virtual Component Interface (VCI).

Because the Open Core Protocol is bus-independent and addresses data, control and test flows, it is a highly qualified departure point for the industry-standard IP core socket interface. OCP fully de-couples an IP core’s operation from its communication behavior and truly enables independent IP core design and reuse. As the common socket, OCP is flexible enough to work in SoCs with multiple processors and bus interconnect structures.

To allow easy inclusion of the socket in all IP cores, the socket standard must be accompanied by an implementation and validation tool suite, test/packaging tool, C-level application programming interface, bridge library, as well as technical support and certification program services. Beyond donating its Open Core Protocol specification as “community source” property, Sonics is also giving OCP-IP ownership of all the aforementioned elements required for a complete standard. OCP-IP will provide a complete solution of technology and support to its members, while assuming responsibility for continuous enhancement of the IP core socket specification and provision of services into the future.

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