Press Release

Open Core Protocol International Partnership Celebrates Second Anniversary

PORTLAND, ORE. — December 15, 2003 — Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP) celebrates its second anniversary in December of 2003. The association provides a common standard for intellectual property core interfaces, or sockets, that facilitate "plug and play" SoC design.

OCP-IP has doubled its membership roster in the past year with technology leaders like Alcatel, Amphion, Beach Solutions, Cadence, CoWare, Hughes, LSI Logic, Micronas, TNI-Valiosys, eInfochips, Imagination Technologies, STMicroelectronics and TSMC. Many of the most prestigious university and SoC research institutions from around the world also joined, including UC Berkeley, University of British Columbia, Tampere University of Technology in Finland, Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and the Taiwan Science Council. More than 1,000 copies of the specification have already been shipped.

"Typical trade organizations can take several years to see the growth and adoption that OCP-IP has enjoyed," said Ian Mackintosh, president of OCP-IP. "Despite a difficult economic climate, OCP-IP has seen its membership base expand rapidly during its brief two-year history because it offers tremendous ROI to members through the availability of free tools, training and technical support necessary to quickly make IP cores OCP compliant and ready for rapid SoC integration with other third-party IP."

This past year has seen the timely release of the OCP 2.0 specification, an announcement of a strategic alliance with VSIA securing joint endorsement of the OCP socket, and the addition of an OCP compliant IP and EDA library listing featuring some 30 companies to the group’s Web site. The growing library makes finding OCP-compliant third party IP and EDA support quick and easy at www.ocpip.org/library/ip.

OCP-IP also initiated and led coordination of a webcast with several other industry organizations including VSIA, Si2, SPIRIT, Accellera and the X-Initiative to educate the community regarding the charters and various differences between each organization.

Early in the year OCP-IP made available OCP-compliant transactional models implemented in SystemC. The models standardize the way OCP-based communication is modeled in various abstraction levels and are available through the OCP-IP Web site at www.ocpip.org.

OCP-IP hosts six active working groups focusing on Vision, Specification, System-Level Design, Memory Semantics, Verification and Marketing in support of the OCP socket.

OCP-IP working groups are managed and maintained by coordinated efforts of leading industry experts. Members are encouraged to join and contribute to OCP development. The Specification Working Group has commenced work on OCP 2.1, which focuses on advanced processor feature support for both DSP and embedded applications.

"Open, common IP interfaces and the ability to reuse IP are critical as the industry continues to move forward with increasingly complex SoC designs," said Mackintosh. "Our very productive working groups ensure not only a standard for today but one that will address future needs as well. We are proud of our accomplishments in our short but productive history and look forward to many more successful years."

###