Four Japanese chip and consumer electronic companies and an American electronic design automation company have banded to together to promote the exchange of chip design data. The consortium hopes that their efforts will speed up chip development.
Toshiba Corp, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Fujitsu Ltd, Sony Corp and Mentor Graphics Inc are planning to develop a network for the distribution of IC intellectual property over the internet. The group, which is calling itself the IP Highway Consortium, will try and define protocols for transferring design, encryption, catalog and other chip information between companies. The consortium expects to work over the next year on developing the system and establishing the technical specifications.
