List of semiconductor IP core vendors explained

The following is a list of notable vendors in the business of licensing IP cores.

Analog-to-digital converters (ADC)

• Cadence Design Systems
• Cosmic Circuits
• Dolphin Integration
• S3 Group
• Synopsys

Broadband modem and error correction

• Cadence Design Systems
• CEVA, Inc.
• IMEC
• On2 Technologies (through acquisition of Hantro)
• Synopsys (through acquisition of Virage Logic)
• Tensilica (now part of Cadence Design Systems)

Digital-to-analog converters (DAC)

• Cadence Design Systems
• Cosmic Circuits (now part of Cadence Design Systems)
• Dolphin Integration
• S3 Group

Digital signal processors (DSP)

• Synopsys - ARC
• Tensilica - Xtensa (now part of Cadence Design Systems)

DRAM

DRAM controllers

• Actel
• Altera
• Arm Holdings
• Barco Silex
• Cadence Design Systems (through acquisition of Denali Software)
• Faraday Technology
• Lattice Semiconductor
• Rambus
• Synopsys
• Xilinx (acquired by AMD)

DRAM PHYs

• Arm Holdings
• Cadence Design Systems (through acquisition of Denali Software)
• Synopsys (through acquisition of Virage Logic)

High-bandwidth memory - HBM PHYs

• eSilicon
• Rambus
• Synopsys

Hybrid memory cube - HMC Controllers

• Open-Silicon
• University of Heidelberg^[1]

Communication IP

Network-on-chip (NoC) / On-chip interconnect

• Arteris IP
• Arm Holdings

Bluetooth SW stack, link layer, and PHY

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Dicentric and Sunrise Micro Devices)

Ethernet PHY

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Artisan Components)
• Cadence Design Systems

V-by-One

• Socionext - HV Series

General-purpose microprocessors

• Andes Technology, Codasip, SiFive, and others - RISC-V
• Arm Holdings - arm Cortex and Neoverse processors
• CEVA, Inc. - CEVA-X DSP
• Dolphin Integration - 8051, 80251
• eSi-RISC - eSi-RISC
• Freescale and others - ColdFire
• IBM and others - PowerPC
• Infineon Technologies - TricoreA
• MIPS - MIPS
• OpenCores - OpenRISC
• Renesas - SuperH
• Socionext - Fujitsu FR
• Sun Microsystems and others - OpenSPARC
• Synopsys - ARC
• Tensilica - Xtensa (now part of Cadence Design Systems)
• Western Design Center - 6502, 65816, 65xx
• Xilinx (acquired by AMD) - MicroBlaze

Graphics processing units (GPU)

• AMD
• Arm Holdings
• Imagination Technologies
• Intel
• NVidia

FPGA

• Altera
• Xilinx (acquired by AMD)

Embedded FPGA (eFPGA)

• Menta SAS

HDMI

• Silicon Image
• Synopsys

ISP

• Silicon Image
• Socionext - Milbeaut

I/O pad libraries

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Artisan Components)
• Faraday Technology
• Synopsys
• TSMC

On-chip SRAMs

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Artisan Components)
• Dolphin Integration
• eSilicon
• Synopsys (through acquisition of Virage Logic)

Phase-locked loops (PLL)

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Artisan Components)
• Cadence Design Systems
• CEVA, Inc.
• Cosmic Circuits
• S3 Group
• TSMC

Power management

• S3 Group
• Cosmic Circuits
• Dolphin Integration
• SiliconGate Lda

Serial ATA (SATA) controllers

• CEVA, Inc.
• Synopsys Inc.

Standard cell libraries

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Artisan Components)
• Faraday Technology
• NanGate
• Silvaco (through acquisition of Dolphin Integration's libraries)
• Synopsys

Video processors and computer graphics

• Arm Holdings (through acquisition of Falanx and Logipard)
• CEVA, Inc.
• Chips&Media Specializes in video codecs, image signal processing, and deep learning-based computer vision system (super-resolution).
• Google (through acquisition of On2 Technologies)
• Imagination Technologies
• Silicon Image
• Socionext - HEVC/H.265, SEERIS 2.5D Graphics IP
• Vivante Corporation (offers GPU IP solutions for applications in the mobile, consumer, automotive, embedded, real time/mission critical, and home entertainment markets.)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Computer Architecture (1996-2021), chair of Computer Architecture Group, Prof. em. Ulrich Brüning . Heidelberg University, Institute of Computer Engineering (ZITI) . 2024-08-20.