Which companies license intellectual property for microcontrollers

[brucehoult]

You can customise cores with various options here: https://www.sifive.com/core-designer

Coming soon, you'll be able to integrate a core or cores with a wide range of peripherals (both analogue and digital) to design a complete custom SoC yourself, online: https://www.sifive.com/chip-designer

Ahhh .. and the site is currently slashdotted.

Or, "Linused"

[ZeroResistance]

Very high level. You only pick what components you want: CPU cores, IP blocks. It's the system's/SiFive's responsibility to make sure it works. The user does nothing about layout, nothing about electrical characteristics. More like some of the high level drag-and-drop FPGA tools, except it's for SoCs.

Ok! so as I understand it SiFive's Chip designer will also help in assembling the IP blocks for Analog peripherals like ADC / DAC? apart from the regular uC peripherals like counters/timers, capture/compare, DMA etc.

[brucehoult]

Very high level. You only pick what components you want: CPU cores, IP blocks. It's the system's/SiFive's responsibility to make sure it works. The user does nothing about layout, nothing about electrical characteristics. More like some of the high level drag-and-drop FPGA tools, except it's for SoCs.

Ok! so as I understand it SiFive's Chip designer will also help in assembling the IP blocks for Analog peripherals like ADC / DAC? apart from the regular uC peripherals like counters/timers, capture/compare, DMA etc.

Yes, Chip Designer includes analogue/mixed signal IP blocks from several partners, including but not limited to SiFive acquisition Open-Silicon.