Electronics > Beginners

Which companies license intellectual property for microcontrollers

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ZeroResistance:
ARM is the leader, however they only do processors. I mean they will only license you the IP of the Cortex.
Same goes for MIPS they would prorbably only license the IP of the MIPS processor.

But there is more to a microcontrollers like

AHB / APB Bus
Analog Peripherals ADC / DAC
Enhanced Peripherals Counters / UART / SPI / I2C / Capture Compare
Controllers DMA / Ext. Memory
SRAM
Flash
PLL / Oscillators


Who provides these? I guess companies like ST would be buying these IP's from providers and then integrating it into their STM32 microcontrollers.

So how does the whole process work out?
Are there any companies out there that sell a "fast to market" IP for the whole microcontroller.

bson:
They roll their own.

Although I believe APB/AHB and the corresponding crossbars come from ARM.

tsman:
Synopsys do what you're looking for.

dmills:
Note that while some of those are feasible as more or less process independent netlists, quite a few things there are **highly** process dependent (ADCs, memories, PLL, Osc), and those you would probably wind up getting as part of a technology library for whatever process you were fabricating in from someone like synopsis.

The pure logic stuff you probably largely have in house or can trivially license in whatever HDL makes sense.

Regards, Dan.

coppice:
Analogue and mixed signal modules are normally custom designed for a specific application, as they are very process dependent. Any move to a finer geometry will usually require a lot of rework of these things. However, there are a number of people who licence pure digital modules they have developed, and a lot of small players use these. They will often require some adaption, although if they are being plugged into an ARM bus they will probably be available ready to go.

Big players, like ST, usually develop everything in house.
 

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