engineering

Quality intellectual property metric

Quality intellectual property metric is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Quality intellectual property metric rather than just read about it. In short: The quality intellectual property metric (QIP) is an international standard, developed by Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) for measuring Intellectual Property (IP) or Silicon intellectual property (SIP) quality and examining the practices used to design, integrate and support the SIP. SIP hardening is required to facilitate the reuse of IP in integrated circuit design.

Key takeaways

Quality intellectual property metric belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Quality intellectual property metric to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Quality intellectual property metric from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The quality intellectual property metric (QIP) is an international standard, developed by Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA) for measuring Intellectual Property (IP) or Silicon intellectual property (SIP) quality and examining the practices used to design, integrate and support the SIP. SIP hardening is required to facilitate the reuse of IP in integrated circuit design.

Background and importance Many computer processors use a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design, which is intended to include all of a device's functions on a single chip. As a result, these chips need to include numerous technical standards that the device will use. One solution to designing such a chip is the reuse of high quality IP. Reusing IP from others means that the chip designer does not need to redesign these elements. IP quality is the key to successful SoC designs, but it is one of the SoC’s most challenging problems.

QIP metric allows both the IP designers and IP integrators to measure the quality of an IP core against a checklist of critical issues. IP integrators make use of the IP cores into their own design and deliver final integrated circuit for an application, e.g. an integrated circuit designer of iPhone main processor IC (ARM architecture CPU) integrates other IP cores like USB 2.0, DSP, MP4 decoder, etc., so that the additional features of USB 2.0, MP4 decoder, etc. can be easily embedded into the final IC. The QIP typically consists of interactive Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with sets of questions to be answered by the IP vendor.

SIP quality measure framework Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) started to develop a SIP verification and quality measures framework in 2005, based on QIP metric. The objective is to develop a technical framework for SIP quality measures and evaluation based on QIP. Third-party SIP evaluation service is provided by HKSTP, so that IP integrators can know the quality of their desired SIP cores. Integrated circuit (IC) designers have developed their own IC design, and such design can be reused by other IC designers. Other IC designers can reduce their risk of IC design, because such parts of design (IP cores) are well established and known to work well. But other IC designers do not know the quality of such IP cores provided. The original IP providers cannot provide the IP cores to other IC designers for evaluation, as it could allow competitors to steal their technologies. The solution is to have a third-party review the quality and value of the IP. HKSTP is the third party between them and can act as a judge body, to evaluate the quality of IP cores of various IP providers, based on the public standard QIP metric. Other IP designers can know and choose their IP provider, based on the information provided by the third party, HKSTP. The IP providers can also get the evaluation report and improve the quality of their IP cores.

Soft and hard SIP There are soft SIP and hard SIP verification and quality measures.

Soft IP comes with design source code in the form of synthesizable HDL (Hardware description language) code (VHDL and Verilog are HDL). Hard IP is a design macro and model without HDL code available; they are optimized for power, size or performance, and mapped to a specific Process technology. Also refer to SIP hardening.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Quality intellectual property metric

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Quality intellectual property metric claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Quality intellectual property metric before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Quality intellectual property metric ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Quality intellectual property metric

In research: Quality intellectual property metric appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Quality intellectual property metric in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Quality intellectual property metric is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Electronic design, Electronic engineering, Integrated circuits, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Quality intellectual property metric outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Quality intellectual property metric in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Quality intellectual property metric means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Quality intellectual property metric out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Quality intellectual property metric in simple terms?

Why does Quality intellectual property metric matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Quality intellectual property metric?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Quality intellectual property metric.