Essential Guide to Semiconductors, The

Intellectual Property Licensing

ASICs and field-programmable chips are closely tied with another concept called intellectual property. Semiconductor intellectual property (IP) is simply the idea of reusing existing chip designs in new chip designs. Like magpies, chip designers like to borrow and reuse what they can from earlier chips rather than designing every single function of a new chip entirely from scratch. Actually, it's not even a question of preference anymore; there's simply no time to design a chip completely from scratch.

An architect designing a skyscraper would no sooner design individual bricks and plumbing fixtures than an engineer would design each transistor or logic gate. It's only sensible to use preexisting fixtures. Like ...