Chiplink Releases Technical White Paper: The Importance of Silicon Verification for IP

With the continuous improvement of the global semiconductor industry, the entire IC design market continues to grow rapidly. According to data released by SIA, global IC sales in 2020 will be US$439 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.5%. Mainland IC companies only account for 5% of the global IC market, and there is huge potential.

In addition, as the upstream link of IC design, semiconductor IP has also ushered in vigorous development due to its high performance, excellent power consumption, moderate cost, and shortened design cycle. According to IPnest’s statistics on the global semiconductor IP market in 2020, global design IP sales increased by 16.7% in 2020 to $4.6 billion, the best growth since 2000, and the largest IP market in the past year. One of the highlights. Moreover, the growth rate of the IP market has exceeded the semiconductor industry itself in the past 10 years, showing a trend of rapid growth.

In this industry context, on November 10, 2021, Shanghai Chiplink Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Chiplink) held the “Shanghai Chiplink 2021 Golden Autumn Technology White Paper Release and Strategic Cooperation Signing” ceremony in Shanghai.

Mao Caihong, Deputy Secretary General of Shanghai Integrated Circuit Association, Liu Xiaodong, Chairman of Suzhou Hengying Capital, Ma Hongwei, Chairman of Tianjin Harwick Technology Co., Ltd., Qiu Xianhuan, Deputy General Manager of Hefei Jinghe Integrated Circuit, Ju Long, President of SEMI China and other guests delivered speeches and shared professional insights and perspectives.

“2021 Golden Autumn Technology White Paper” released

At the event site, Chiplink released the “Fifth Generation Semiconductor Silicon Intellectual Property Core White Paper”. The white paper is divided into two parts. This time the first part – IP siliconization, focuses on accelerating the SoC process and proposes Modularization of IP design into a heterogeneous stacking model. The structure and modularization of Silicon Proven introduced in this white paper will be an important innovation to accelerate the SoC process; the next part – Chip IP, focuses on using silicon-proven IP cores to reduce the risk of front-end design. The goal of the upper and lower parts is to shorten the cycle from design to tape out.

He Weiling, the founder and chairman of Chiplink, took Moore’s Law as the starting point, interpreting the importance of IP to the integrated circuit industry from multiple dimensions such as history and current situation, international and local, and introduced that the process nodes will be obtained again and again under this law. Breakthrough development process. In the post-Moore’s Law era, technological advancements in semiconductor processes are still a winning factor for many design companies.

In view of the fact that the current traditional design methods and rules are actually behind the latest trend of integrated circuit development, Shanghai Chip Lianxin proposes a new design concept with Silicon Proven modules as the heterogeneous main body to drive a new generation of EDA rules and tools. Accelerating the design-to-manufacture speed and quality is expected to reduce this critical period from 18 months to 9 months.

He Weiling said that today, domestic IC production is like stacking wood, 90% of the IP is ready-made, just pile it together, but if there is a problem with only one IP, the entire chip will be affected. Therefore, silicon verification is the key to IP and an important sign of quality assurance. Otherwise, even if there is no problem with the IP in the simulation, it will not be necessarily when it is actually running. Only silicon-proven IP can meet market needs.

According to reports, MIPS IP has obtained commercialization verification of 16 billion silicon-validated CPUs. It is expected that in 2021, the number of MIPS IP authorizations will exceed 150 million, and it will grow to 170-220 million in 2022. With the rise of more and more domestic chip design companies and terminal manufacturers joining the chip-making army, the domestic IP industry is ushering in a rare opportunity. He Weiling believes that IP is the soul of the integrated circuit industry and the pain point and turning point for the development of China’s integrated circuits.

At the press conference, Director Ge Lei of Chiplink shared the successful case of Chiplink’s independent CPU IP construction. In 2019, Chiplink obtained the exclusive commercial operation right of MIPS Technology in China, and obtained the permanent global patent authorization of CPU core, including infrastructure, MIPS instruction set architecture, compatible CPU core authorization and sub-license, more than More than 1000 MIPS related patents, etc.

Ge Lei said that as the only legal and compliant new integrated circuit design service company in mainland China with a complete general-purpose RISC CPU instruction set and nearly 100 CPU soft cores, Chiplink has successfully built a MIPS-based general-purpose CPU IP hardware development and verification platform. and keep it optimized.

In the next step, Chiplink will lead members to develop processor cores and instruction sets of the MIPS instruction set architecture, and provide corresponding tool chain technologies to support the development of existing CPU cores and derived processor cores, so that Chinese chip design companies can use safe , mature and self-controllable technology, more rapid and convenient development of SoC chips.

At the event, Director Su Yunqiang of Chip Union shared the ecological construction of MIPS IP. He said that at present, MIPS has formed a complete software ecosystem, which is formed in the Linux kernel, tool chain, various programming development environments, distributions, etc. a comprehensive ecosystem. In the future, Chiplink will legally and compliantly carry out the secondary development of general-purpose CPU IP to enable the localization of China’s integrated circuits and help Chinese products enter the global market.

It is worth noting that at the press conference, Chiplink and Peking University Shanghai Microelectronics Research Institute held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony, which marked a key step in the MIPS IP ecological layout of Chiplink and contributed to the research of Peking University Shanghai Microelectronics. The institute focuses on incubating and cultivating enterprises’ chips and applications at the MCU level, and provides open-source technical support.

In addition, at the event site, President Yu Ke of Chiplink hosted a roundtable forum, and talked with Dr. Liu Xiaodong, Chairman of Suzhou Hengying Capital, Dr. Zhou Zhengyu, Chairman of Actions Technology, and Dr. Xu Bulu, General Manager of Shanghai Silicon Intellectual Property, around “China’s independent and controllable” The topic of “The Impact of IP on Integrated Circuit Development” was discussed, sharing the importance of IP to chip design, the relationship of independent and controllable IP to China’s integrated circuit development, and the importance of intellectual property in the current environment and situation.

write at the end

Lianxin is fully loaded with the leadership of chip IP technology and creates the driving force for the future of “chips”. With its unique closed-loop chip design services, it helps the development of domestic chips. At the same time, it integrates into the local industrial chain with its independent and controllable advantages, providing experience for the domestic market. Silicon-proven CPU and GPU IP products. On the other hand, localization substitution is only the first step in the development of China’s integrated circuit industry. For a long time, while serving the Chinese market, Chiplink has continued to make efforts in the global market, with independent and controllable IP as the core, to help the world chip IP industry development of.

Focusing on the future, Chiplet will be committed to the development of Chiplets and die banks, which can not only lower the economic threshold of high-end process chips, shorten the development time, but also effectively control the risks of chip development, and help customers compete in the ever-changing market. , escort.