Standard FAQs
Standard FAQs
What
is The SPIRIT Consortium and why was it started?
The SPIRIT Consortium is now a non-profit entity incorporated in California. It was officially founded at the 2003 Design Automation Conference (DAC) in response to the need for a standard mechanism for describing semiconductor intellectual property (IP) that would provide for the automation of IP integration. The announcement of the formation of this organization followed several months of discussion among the original steering committee companies, comprised of ARM, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Philips Semiconductors, ST, and Synopsys. These companies agreed on a simple premise: the design of complex Systems-on-Chip (SoC) is getting progressively harder, and greater efficiencies are required in the IP re-use process and in multi-vendor design flow integration. Since then, respect for The Consortium’s dedication to providing timely and comprehensively tested technical deliverables, as well as a general industry interest in the developments of The Consortium, have built the organization to a robust international membership of well over 50 companies. This includes very strong representation from the major tools and IP providers in the industry today. At DAC 2006, The SPIRIT Consortium formalized its operations with its official launch as a California non-profit organization.
TOP
What are the objectives of The SPIRIT
Consortium?
To operate as a lean, focused standards organization with a reputation for delivery of practical IP re-use and design-flow integration specifications. To establish a set of IP and tool integration standards enabling proliferation of IP reuse through design automation. To remove market barriers through IP automation and standards. To fuel SoC integration through design integration. To enable fastest path to embedded system design
What
is this ‘IP-XACT’ thing anyway? Can’t I just use SPIRIT?
The SPIRIT Consortium is growing up! SPIRIT used to be shorthand for both our specifications and our organization. To avoid his confusion, and announce that we have truly flow-hardened our specifications, we have decided to officially re-brand our meta-data specification product line as IP-XACT. The IP-XACT naming will continue to apply to all meta-data standards from The SPIRIT Consortium. The launch of this name corresponds to what we regard as our first full solution: the v1.2 specification for RTL design and verification.
TOP
What
is the relationship with the SystemRDL Alliance?
Two of the contributing members of The Consortium are also members of the SystemRDL Alliance. A key principle of the IP-XACT specification is to remain language neutral, but to provide support for the languages that are widely used by enabling member contributions. A call for participation to review the schema to ensure that the data model used by system description languages can be captured in the IP-XACT schema was issued at DAC 2006. Resource is committed to cover the SystemRDL data model.
What
is the importance of the announced relationship with Si2?
Si2 is perhaps the most recognized industry body for technical standards applying to design-chain integration in the hardware implementation flow. Recently, they have been considering how their developments link into the RTL and system-level design flow. The IP-XACT specification from The SPIRIT Consortium has established a strong industry value in this area. Si2 and The Consortium have a largely common membership, so it makes sense that as The SPIRIT Consortium extends the application of meta-data into the front- and back-end flows that an official engagement with Si2 is developed. We see this as a mutually beneficial collaboration. We envisage the expertise from Si2 helping to provide requirements for The SPIRIT Consortium as it develops any necessary schema extensions for back-end integration, and the IP-XACT meta-data helping to contribute to the Si2’s Open Modeling architecture in Open Access.
TOP
I
thought OSCI was creating the TLM standards?
The Consortium is not in conflict with specifications from any standards organization, be it OSCI, Si2, Eclipse, Accellera, OCP-IP, etc. We are creating a meta-data standard that enables a language- and environment-neutral description of an IP regardless of its implementation. This meta-data description is provided alongside any new or legacy design IP. In the case of OSCI TLM, our open-source worked examples for the IP-XACT ESL Extensions will use OSCI TLM as an example application. Over the coming year, you will see official relationships form between The Consortium and the other industry standards organizations recognized as developing standard design practice in various areas. Our position is one of complete neutrality: the single language, abstraction and use-model neutral way of exchanging machine-interpretable information about system architecture.
There
have been a lot of IP reuse initiatives in the industry. How are you going
to guarantee the success of this one?
We have already proven that The SPIRIT Consortium is making a significant contribution to the industry, and we are building upon the strong base we have established. We aim to remain a lean organization that does not over-reach and that continues to address specific technical concerns to help improve IP reuse in design flows today. The operational approach of The SPIRIT Consortium is based on a ‘skin-in-the-game’ approach to membership rather than ‘pay-to-play.. In particular, Contributing and Steering Committee companies must engage around 0.25 heads of engineering resource to each working group they participate in. Our Marketing Committee also directly engages the marketing teams of the Steering Committee companies to ensure a broad base of value awareness. Beyond resource commitment, we ensure that there are demonstrations of our deliverables in member tools and IP technology at the time of our public releases, and that all deliverables are backed with clear open-source examples. Anyone can download these examples, along with an example semantic checker. With our clear operational and delivery strategies, we ensure committed and demonstrable delivery with a clean out-of-box experience for our users.
TOP
Are
The Consortium specifications freely licensable?
Absolutely! The latest released version of the specification is always downloadable from The Consortium’s Web site. The click-through agreement is very light-weight and has no restrictions on deployment or any obligation for licensing fees to The SPIRIT Consortium or member companies. The development of the specifications, including IP contribution from member companies, is performed under The Consortium IP Policy. This policy can be downloaded from www.spiritconsortium.org.
Are
The SPIRIT Consortium specifications dependent on, or a new, bus
standard?
No. The SPIRIT Consortium specifications are, and will continue to be, fully architecture agnostic, both for interconnect and general virtual components. It can describe any SoC design.
Is
IP-XACT from The SPIRIT Consortium a tool?
No. The SPIRIT Consortium is a common standard for IP description that tools from multiple vendors can interpret. The SPIRIT Consortium will not deliver or endorse tools, but may provide semantic checkers, examples and convenience widgets associated with correct deployment of the specification.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium an IP catalog?
No. The SPIRIT Consortium descriptions can be used by IP catalogs to display and exchange IP integration requirements.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium design language dependent?
No. All of The SPIRIT Consortium base specifications are fully design-language neutral. As we move forward, any elements of the specifications that enhance its adoption into a key language-specific arena would be co-developed and endorsed by the appropriate language standards group.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium a replacement for VSIA's IP transfer or IP quality
specifications?
No. The SPIRIT Consortium is a design deliverable that relates design intent to design implementation. IP transfer and IP quality metrics may include IP-XACT descriptions as one of the deliverables they consider with an IP bundle.
Does
The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT meta-data expose proprietary data about an
IP?
The SPIRIT Consortium encapsulates data that many IP suppliers provide openly in technical reference manuals today. It expresses standard information for design-IP integration, but no proprietary details about its internal structure.
Does
The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT specification limit what I can describe about
my IP?
No. The extensibility mechanisms in IP-XACT provide a consistent way for users to add their requirements to the basic The SPIRIT Consortium descriptions.
What
characteristics of The SPIRIT Consortium membership ensure delivery and
adoption of the specifications?
The SPIRIT Consortium is a pragmatic group of companies that want to create and validate specifications in order to help bring greater efficiency to SoC system design. The creation of the standard is driven by strict scoping to ensure deliverables in a timely manner, and managed commitment of engineering resource. The structure of The SPIRIT Consortium ensures that all requirements from integrated device manufacturers, IP providers and design-flow tooling providers are represented.
Who
will benefit from the efforts of The SPIRIT Consortium?
The entire industry will benefit from the existence of The SPIRIT Consortium specifications. The specifications will ensure that IP providers can supply IP in a way that facilitates automatic integration. Additionally, integrated device manufacturers and systems integrators will benefit from faster time-to-market and correct-by-construction integration. Tool providers will be able to supply framework and point tools that are capable of exchanging SoC design configuration details, and that are compatible with standard mechanisms of expressing complex IP. Participants in The SPIRIT Consortium will have the ability to help shape these specifications, and will have early exposure to the technology.
Are
the IP-XACT specifications from The SPIRIT Consortium
available?
Yes. They can be downloaded from our web site here.
What
is The SPIRIT Consortium's involvement in the IEEE Standardization
Process?
The IEEE P1685 Standardization process, sponsored by The SPIRIT Consortium, started in May 2006. This effort will help officially standardize the technical contribution from The SPIRIT Consortium. The initial contribution in Q2 2006 is The SPIRIT Consortium's IP-XACT base specification, and the final technical drop will be IP-XACT ESL Extensions (v1.4) to the base specification. This is expected in Q4 2006.
What
is IP-XACT?
IP-XACT is the official name for the meta-data and API standards being delivered by The SPIRIT Consortium. The current specification for RTL, formerly known as The SPIRIT Consortium specification v1.2, is under review with the IEEE P1685 working group. The name IP-XACT will be carried forward for all meta-data related specifications from The Consortium.
How
does the IP-XACT ESL Extensions specification differ from the base
specification? What happened to The SPIRIT Consortium specification
v2.0?
The IP-XACT ESL Extensions (1.4) specification contains the transaction-level modeling extensions to the IP-XACT RTL base specifications. This specification was renamed in May 2006 from v2.0 to v1.4 in an effort to recognize that the current IP-XACT specifications are ready and validated for industrial adoption today for multi-vendor, RT-level SoC design. The ESL Extensions will greatly enhance the ability for the specifications to extend to multi-abstraction design, and a clean migration path will be provided for those adopting The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT standards today.
What
is ARM's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
ARM is a leading semiconductor IP company and holds the position of Vice-President in The SPIRIT Consortium. As a major supplier of IP and tools to express them, ARM is helping to drive requirements and priorities of the IP-XACT standardization process. The provision of ARM IP descriptions and tools compatible with The SPIRIT Consortium specifications will enable a wide range of users to take advantage of the IP-XACT specifications for design integration into multi-vendor flows.
What
is Cadence's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
Cadence is one of the major EDA companies and as such is very important in ensuring that the resulting standard will be supported and extended in the future. Cadence has incorporated schemas into its system level design tools for years, and has recently extended those some of those tools to support SystemC. Cadence will work in the consortium to bring this knowledge into a new and combined XML Schema, meeting the needs and goals of standardization and the users. Cadence holds the position of IEEE P1685 chair for the IP-XACT standardization in the IEEE-SA process.
What
is LSI’s contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
LSI Logic holds the Technical Director position in The SPIRIT Consortium. Joining The SPIRIT Consortium steering committee in January 2006, LSI logic is looking to help drive technical development and deployment of the IP-XACT specifications through its extensive experience in the exchange of IP and automated system integration.
What
is Mentor Graphics' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
As a founding member and provider of the initial technology contribution, Mentor Graphics is an extremely active participant in The SPIRIT Consortium standardization process, encouraging the adoption of this advanced IP Reuse enabling methodology. Mentor Graphics contributed the Platform Express XML Component Schema technology, which forms the core of the IP-XACT standard today. This schema had already been proven to document information required to generate complex multiprocessor designs from a wide variety of IP sources, and provides a solid foundation for this important standard.
What
is Philips' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
Philips Semiconductors hold the position of President of The SPIRIT Consortium. Philips is one of the leading integrated device manufacturers as well as a major IP provider. Philips is contributing by providing adequate testing of the standard throughout the full development flow of a SoC. The last 5 years of experience gained with development and use of an automated development flow, using generators in a standardized environment, are being brought into The SPIRIT Consortium.
What
is ST's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
ST is one of the leading integrated device manufacturers as well as a major internal IP provider. ST is contributing by providing user input based on its understanding of the requirements, partly relying on past experiences with such automation tools. It is also providing extensive testing of the standard from IP creation to IP integration.
What
is Synopsys' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
Synopsys and its customers have been using Synopsys' coreBuilder and coreConsultant tools for many years to package, deliver and configure synthesizable IP cores, enabling a predictable, highest Quality-of-Results (QoR) path to silicon. As a founding member of The SPIRIT Consortium, Synopsys will work towards ensuring that the same levels of configurability and silicon QoR predictability can be achieved when IP is packaged following the XML-based IP formats and associated IP tool APIs we are defining in The Consortium. Synopsys holds the position of Treasurer in The SPIRIT Consortium.
How
do companies become members of The SPIRIT Consortium?
The SPIRIT Consortium is actively recruiting new Reviewing and Contributing members. With the new Associate classification of membership, we are also welcoming non-profit research organizations and academic institutes to become involved. Companies interested in joining The SPIRIT Consortium should contact info@spiritconsortium.com. Companies applying for membership will have access to the documentation, be involved in reviews and provide input to the standard. Participating companies will be expected to endorse the meta-data and API specifications upon release. Contributing members can be approved for working-group participation based upon a clear statement of contribution, and clear and continued application of engineering resource to the specification developments.
How
is The SPIRIT Consortium organized?
The SPIRIT Consortium has four levels of participation: Steering Committee Membership, Contributing Committee Membership, Reviewing Committee Membership, and Associate Membership. The original Steering Committee—comprised of ARM, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Philips Semiconductors, ST Microelectronics, and Synopsys—was recently joined by LSI Logic. The Steering Committee develops and approves the roadmap, and works with the Technical Director to develop and manage engineering plans for development and validation of the specifications. The Marketing Committee constituted of Steering Committee members drives message deployment, partnerships and adoption. Contributing members dedicate engineering resources to the technical working groups; Reviewing members help validate ALPHA and BETA versions of the specifications; Associate members are non-profit organizations and research institutes interested in the early release developments within The Consortium.
Is
there a fee for member companies to participate in The SPIRIT
Consortium?
The SPIRIT Consortium offers free membership to any company as a Reviewing Member or Associate Member, without any obligation except a request to help us review our early specifications! Contributing Membership is also free of an annual fee, and open to any company, but we do require the commitment of resource. This is one of our keys to success. Board Member companies, which pay annual dues, are elected from the base of Contributing Member companies.
Is
IP-XACT usable today?
Yes. The standard is IP and tool validated, and being demonstrated today.
- What is The SPIRIT Consortium and why was it started?
- What are the objectives of The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is this ‘IP-XACT’ thing anyway? Can’t I just use SPIRIT?
- What is the relationship with the SystemRDL Alliance?
- What is the importance of the announced relationship with Si2?
- I thought OSCI was creating the TLM standards?
- There have been a lot of IP reuse initiatives in the industry. How are you going to guarantee the success of this one?
- Are The Consortium specifications freely licensable?
- Are The SPIRIT Consortium specifications dependent on, or a new, bus standard?
- Is IP-XACT from The SPIRIT Consortium a tool?
- Is The SPIRIT Consortium an IP catalog?
- Is The SPIRIT Consortium design language dependent?
- Is The SPIRIT Consortium a replacement for VSIA's IP transfer or IP quality specifications?
- Does The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT meta-data expose proprietary data about an IP?
- Does The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT specification limit what I can describe about my IP?
- What characteristics of The SPIRIT Consortium membership ensure delivery and adoption of the specifications?
- Who will benefit from the efforts of The SPIRIT Consortium?
- Are the IP-XACT specifications from The SPIRIT Consortium available?
- What is The SPIRIT Consortium's involvement in the IEEE Standardization Process?
- What is IP-XACT?
- How does the IP-XACT ESL Extensions specification differ from the base specification? What happened to The SPIRIT Consortium specification v2.0?
- What is ARM's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is Cadence's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is LSI’s contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is Mentor Graphics' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is Philips' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is ST's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- What is Synopsys' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?
- How do companies become members of The SPIRIT Consortium?
- How is The SPIRIT Consortium organized?
- Is there a fee for member companies to participate in The SPIRIT Consortium?
- Is IP-XACT usable today?
Standard FAQs
What
is The SPIRIT Consortium and why was it started?The SPIRIT Consortium is now a non-profit entity incorporated in California. It was officially founded at the 2003 Design Automation Conference (DAC) in response to the need for a standard mechanism for describing semiconductor intellectual property (IP) that would provide for the automation of IP integration. The announcement of the formation of this organization followed several months of discussion among the original steering committee companies, comprised of ARM, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Philips Semiconductors, ST, and Synopsys. These companies agreed on a simple premise: the design of complex Systems-on-Chip (SoC) is getting progressively harder, and greater efficiencies are required in the IP re-use process and in multi-vendor design flow integration. Since then, respect for The Consortium’s dedication to providing timely and comprehensively tested technical deliverables, as well as a general industry interest in the developments of The Consortium, have built the organization to a robust international membership of well over 50 companies. This includes very strong representation from the major tools and IP providers in the industry today. At DAC 2006, The SPIRIT Consortium formalized its operations with its official launch as a California non-profit organization.
TOP
What are the objectives of The SPIRIT
Consortium?To operate as a lean, focused standards organization with a reputation for delivery of practical IP re-use and design-flow integration specifications. To establish a set of IP and tool integration standards enabling proliferation of IP reuse through design automation. To remove market barriers through IP automation and standards. To fuel SoC integration through design integration. To enable fastest path to embedded system design
What
is this ‘IP-XACT’ thing anyway? Can’t I just use SPIRIT?The SPIRIT Consortium is growing up! SPIRIT used to be shorthand for both our specifications and our organization. To avoid his confusion, and announce that we have truly flow-hardened our specifications, we have decided to officially re-brand our meta-data specification product line as IP-XACT. The IP-XACT naming will continue to apply to all meta-data standards from The SPIRIT Consortium. The launch of this name corresponds to what we regard as our first full solution: the v1.2 specification for RTL design and verification.
TOP
What
is the relationship with the SystemRDL Alliance?Two of the contributing members of The Consortium are also members of the SystemRDL Alliance. A key principle of the IP-XACT specification is to remain language neutral, but to provide support for the languages that are widely used by enabling member contributions. A call for participation to review the schema to ensure that the data model used by system description languages can be captured in the IP-XACT schema was issued at DAC 2006. Resource is committed to cover the SystemRDL data model.
What
is the importance of the announced relationship with Si2?Si2 is perhaps the most recognized industry body for technical standards applying to design-chain integration in the hardware implementation flow. Recently, they have been considering how their developments link into the RTL and system-level design flow. The IP-XACT specification from The SPIRIT Consortium has established a strong industry value in this area. Si2 and The Consortium have a largely common membership, so it makes sense that as The SPIRIT Consortium extends the application of meta-data into the front- and back-end flows that an official engagement with Si2 is developed. We see this as a mutually beneficial collaboration. We envisage the expertise from Si2 helping to provide requirements for The SPIRIT Consortium as it develops any necessary schema extensions for back-end integration, and the IP-XACT meta-data helping to contribute to the Si2’s Open Modeling architecture in Open Access.
TOP
I
thought OSCI was creating the TLM standards?The Consortium is not in conflict with specifications from any standards organization, be it OSCI, Si2, Eclipse, Accellera, OCP-IP, etc. We are creating a meta-data standard that enables a language- and environment-neutral description of an IP regardless of its implementation. This meta-data description is provided alongside any new or legacy design IP. In the case of OSCI TLM, our open-source worked examples for the IP-XACT ESL Extensions will use OSCI TLM as an example application. Over the coming year, you will see official relationships form between The Consortium and the other industry standards organizations recognized as developing standard design practice in various areas. Our position is one of complete neutrality: the single language, abstraction and use-model neutral way of exchanging machine-interpretable information about system architecture.
There
have been a lot of IP reuse initiatives in the industry. How are you going
to guarantee the success of this one?We have already proven that The SPIRIT Consortium is making a significant contribution to the industry, and we are building upon the strong base we have established. We aim to remain a lean organization that does not over-reach and that continues to address specific technical concerns to help improve IP reuse in design flows today. The operational approach of The SPIRIT Consortium is based on a ‘skin-in-the-game’ approach to membership rather than ‘pay-to-play.. In particular, Contributing and Steering Committee companies must engage around 0.25 heads of engineering resource to each working group they participate in. Our Marketing Committee also directly engages the marketing teams of the Steering Committee companies to ensure a broad base of value awareness. Beyond resource commitment, we ensure that there are demonstrations of our deliverables in member tools and IP technology at the time of our public releases, and that all deliverables are backed with clear open-source examples. Anyone can download these examples, along with an example semantic checker. With our clear operational and delivery strategies, we ensure committed and demonstrable delivery with a clean out-of-box experience for our users.
TOP
Are
The Consortium specifications freely licensable?Absolutely! The latest released version of the specification is always downloadable from The Consortium’s Web site. The click-through agreement is very light-weight and has no restrictions on deployment or any obligation for licensing fees to The SPIRIT Consortium or member companies. The development of the specifications, including IP contribution from member companies, is performed under The Consortium IP Policy. This policy can be downloaded from www.spiritconsortium.org.
Are
The SPIRIT Consortium specifications dependent on, or a new, bus
standard?No. The SPIRIT Consortium specifications are, and will continue to be, fully architecture agnostic, both for interconnect and general virtual components. It can describe any SoC design.
Is
IP-XACT from The SPIRIT Consortium a tool?No. The SPIRIT Consortium is a common standard for IP description that tools from multiple vendors can interpret. The SPIRIT Consortium will not deliver or endorse tools, but may provide semantic checkers, examples and convenience widgets associated with correct deployment of the specification.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium an IP catalog?No. The SPIRIT Consortium descriptions can be used by IP catalogs to display and exchange IP integration requirements.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium design language dependent?No. All of The SPIRIT Consortium base specifications are fully design-language neutral. As we move forward, any elements of the specifications that enhance its adoption into a key language-specific arena would be co-developed and endorsed by the appropriate language standards group.
Is
The SPIRIT Consortium a replacement for VSIA's IP transfer or IP quality
specifications?No. The SPIRIT Consortium is a design deliverable that relates design intent to design implementation. IP transfer and IP quality metrics may include IP-XACT descriptions as one of the deliverables they consider with an IP bundle.
Does
The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT meta-data expose proprietary data about an
IP?The SPIRIT Consortium encapsulates data that many IP suppliers provide openly in technical reference manuals today. It expresses standard information for design-IP integration, but no proprietary details about its internal structure.
Does
The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT specification limit what I can describe about
my IP?No. The extensibility mechanisms in IP-XACT provide a consistent way for users to add their requirements to the basic The SPIRIT Consortium descriptions.
What
characteristics of The SPIRIT Consortium membership ensure delivery and
adoption of the specifications?The SPIRIT Consortium is a pragmatic group of companies that want to create and validate specifications in order to help bring greater efficiency to SoC system design. The creation of the standard is driven by strict scoping to ensure deliverables in a timely manner, and managed commitment of engineering resource. The structure of The SPIRIT Consortium ensures that all requirements from integrated device manufacturers, IP providers and design-flow tooling providers are represented.
Who
will benefit from the efforts of The SPIRIT Consortium?The entire industry will benefit from the existence of The SPIRIT Consortium specifications. The specifications will ensure that IP providers can supply IP in a way that facilitates automatic integration. Additionally, integrated device manufacturers and systems integrators will benefit from faster time-to-market and correct-by-construction integration. Tool providers will be able to supply framework and point tools that are capable of exchanging SoC design configuration details, and that are compatible with standard mechanisms of expressing complex IP. Participants in The SPIRIT Consortium will have the ability to help shape these specifications, and will have early exposure to the technology.
Are
the IP-XACT specifications from The SPIRIT Consortium
available?Yes. They can be downloaded from our web site here.
What
is The SPIRIT Consortium's involvement in the IEEE Standardization
Process?The IEEE P1685 Standardization process, sponsored by The SPIRIT Consortium, started in May 2006. This effort will help officially standardize the technical contribution from The SPIRIT Consortium. The initial contribution in Q2 2006 is The SPIRIT Consortium's IP-XACT base specification, and the final technical drop will be IP-XACT ESL Extensions (v1.4) to the base specification. This is expected in Q4 2006.
What
is IP-XACT?IP-XACT is the official name for the meta-data and API standards being delivered by The SPIRIT Consortium. The current specification for RTL, formerly known as The SPIRIT Consortium specification v1.2, is under review with the IEEE P1685 working group. The name IP-XACT will be carried forward for all meta-data related specifications from The Consortium.
How
does the IP-XACT ESL Extensions specification differ from the base
specification? What happened to The SPIRIT Consortium specification
v2.0?The IP-XACT ESL Extensions (1.4) specification contains the transaction-level modeling extensions to the IP-XACT RTL base specifications. This specification was renamed in May 2006 from v2.0 to v1.4 in an effort to recognize that the current IP-XACT specifications are ready and validated for industrial adoption today for multi-vendor, RT-level SoC design. The ESL Extensions will greatly enhance the ability for the specifications to extend to multi-abstraction design, and a clean migration path will be provided for those adopting The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT standards today.
What
is ARM's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?ARM is a leading semiconductor IP company and holds the position of Vice-President in The SPIRIT Consortium. As a major supplier of IP and tools to express them, ARM is helping to drive requirements and priorities of the IP-XACT standardization process. The provision of ARM IP descriptions and tools compatible with The SPIRIT Consortium specifications will enable a wide range of users to take advantage of the IP-XACT specifications for design integration into multi-vendor flows.
What
is Cadence's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?Cadence is one of the major EDA companies and as such is very important in ensuring that the resulting standard will be supported and extended in the future. Cadence has incorporated schemas into its system level design tools for years, and has recently extended those some of those tools to support SystemC. Cadence will work in the consortium to bring this knowledge into a new and combined XML Schema, meeting the needs and goals of standardization and the users. Cadence holds the position of IEEE P1685 chair for the IP-XACT standardization in the IEEE-SA process.
What
is LSI’s contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?LSI Logic holds the Technical Director position in The SPIRIT Consortium. Joining The SPIRIT Consortium steering committee in January 2006, LSI logic is looking to help drive technical development and deployment of the IP-XACT specifications through its extensive experience in the exchange of IP and automated system integration.
What
is Mentor Graphics' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?As a founding member and provider of the initial technology contribution, Mentor Graphics is an extremely active participant in The SPIRIT Consortium standardization process, encouraging the adoption of this advanced IP Reuse enabling methodology. Mentor Graphics contributed the Platform Express XML Component Schema technology, which forms the core of the IP-XACT standard today. This schema had already been proven to document information required to generate complex multiprocessor designs from a wide variety of IP sources, and provides a solid foundation for this important standard.
What
is Philips' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?Philips Semiconductors hold the position of President of The SPIRIT Consortium. Philips is one of the leading integrated device manufacturers as well as a major IP provider. Philips is contributing by providing adequate testing of the standard throughout the full development flow of a SoC. The last 5 years of experience gained with development and use of an automated development flow, using generators in a standardized environment, are being brought into The SPIRIT Consortium.
What
is ST's contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?ST is one of the leading integrated device manufacturers as well as a major internal IP provider. ST is contributing by providing user input based on its understanding of the requirements, partly relying on past experiences with such automation tools. It is also providing extensive testing of the standard from IP creation to IP integration.
What
is Synopsys' contribution to The SPIRIT Consortium?Synopsys and its customers have been using Synopsys' coreBuilder and coreConsultant tools for many years to package, deliver and configure synthesizable IP cores, enabling a predictable, highest Quality-of-Results (QoR) path to silicon. As a founding member of The SPIRIT Consortium, Synopsys will work towards ensuring that the same levels of configurability and silicon QoR predictability can be achieved when IP is packaged following the XML-based IP formats and associated IP tool APIs we are defining in The Consortium. Synopsys holds the position of Treasurer in The SPIRIT Consortium.
How
do companies become members of The SPIRIT Consortium?The SPIRIT Consortium is actively recruiting new Reviewing and Contributing members. With the new Associate classification of membership, we are also welcoming non-profit research organizations and academic institutes to become involved. Companies interested in joining The SPIRIT Consortium should contact info@spiritconsortium.com. Companies applying for membership will have access to the documentation, be involved in reviews and provide input to the standard. Participating companies will be expected to endorse the meta-data and API specifications upon release. Contributing members can be approved for working-group participation based upon a clear statement of contribution, and clear and continued application of engineering resource to the specification developments.
How
is The SPIRIT Consortium organized?The SPIRIT Consortium has four levels of participation: Steering Committee Membership, Contributing Committee Membership, Reviewing Committee Membership, and Associate Membership. The original Steering Committee—comprised of ARM, Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Philips Semiconductors, ST Microelectronics, and Synopsys—was recently joined by LSI Logic. The Steering Committee develops and approves the roadmap, and works with the Technical Director to develop and manage engineering plans for development and validation of the specifications. The Marketing Committee constituted of Steering Committee members drives message deployment, partnerships and adoption. Contributing members dedicate engineering resources to the technical working groups; Reviewing members help validate ALPHA and BETA versions of the specifications; Associate members are non-profit organizations and research institutes interested in the early release developments within The Consortium.
Is
there a fee for member companies to participate in The SPIRIT
Consortium?The SPIRIT Consortium offers free membership to any company as a Reviewing Member or Associate Member, without any obligation except a request to help us review our early specifications! Contributing Membership is also free of an annual fee, and open to any company, but we do require the commitment of resource. This is one of our keys to success. Board Member companies, which pay annual dues, are elected from the base of Contributing Member companies.
Is
IP-XACT usable today?Yes. The standard is IP and tool validated, and being demonstrated today.