Mobiveil is a technology company that specializes in delivering high-speed serial interconnect Silicon IP cores and custom and standard form factor hardware boards to leading customers worldwide. Mobiveil raised $125,000 in equity from an undisclosed investor.

The Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) market has been long prevalent within the semiconductor industry. Among the IP offerings, Interface IPs, Processor IPs, and Memory IPs have a larger market share and are sought after by semiconductor companies from third party IP vendors. There is an increased need for IPs primarily for two reasons. Firstly, ready to integrate Silicon Proven IPs bring down the development timeline thereby accelerating the time to market. Secondly, when the customer wants to lower the development costs and the recurring expenditures, it is ideal to license IPs based on the usage. With many IP vendors in the market, the question is what really adds value to customers and help them choose the right vendor. How can an IP centric focus with services built around IPs can deliver value to customers?

SoCs are high complexity ICs that integrate Hardware and Software elements to achieve the optimum performance. The initial stage involves creation of Architecture and Specification, design partitioning and budgeting. This stage is largely handled by the customers and in coordination with their techno-marketing team, they decide on the features to be supported, window of production and release to market. The engineering and procurement team, depending on the internal expertise and funding, scope out the effort to meet the production timeline. The customer in partnership with EDA vendors, IP vendors, Design Services vendors, Foundry, Packaging and Assembly vendors develop their final product/chipset.

The obvious thought process behind choosing an IP is the “make vs. buy” criteria. So the question arises, why would the Electronic OEMs or IDMs decide to procure externally? The reasons are as follows:

• Lack of internal capabilities / Sharing risks