Semiconductor IP News and Trends Blog

Is Semiconductor IP Becoming the Universal Language?

The announcement of ChipEstimate.cn China in native language reinforces the strategic importance of IP in global chip designs.

Will IP become the universal language understood by all semiconductor chip-design engineers? The Esperanto of the technical world, so to speak?

One might argue that mathematics is already the universal language of all science and engineering. Interestingly, the famous mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, also theorized about the possibility of a specifically constructed universal language. He called it the “characteristica universalism,” an “algebra” capable of expressing all conceptual thought. His goal was to build an alphabet of all human thought.

That goal is still evolving. In the meantime, we must avoid the nemesis of a universal language – namely, the “confusion of tongues” described in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Today’s multi-national, multi-lingual, and multi-discipline engineers are well aware of the dangers of miscommunications in technical design content, system integration, and manufacturing.

But I digress. Will IP become a universal language? Maybe not. But the requirement for IP in today’s chip designs has made it the center of all engineering designs. Recognizing the important role that semiconductor IP plays in SoC design – as well as the globalization of engineering teams – Chipestimate.com has created several native-language IP portals. The latest is in China: http://www.chipestimate.cn/.

I’ve reported on the importance of Asian IP for several years – both the good and the bad (see below). Offering an IP portal in the native language of a nation with the fastest-growing number of engineers confirms that Chipestimate.com also recognizes this important trend.

Asian Semiconductor IP stories:

• The Rule of Nine: Challenges Facing the Semiconductor IC Supply Chain: While the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) report focuses on China, the challenges discussed apply to the global IC-supply-chain market.
• Trends of Trends in Semiconductor Intellectual Property: Asian companies – especially a few key leaders in Taiwan and China – will transform IP practices in their regions and then across the world. This is why the recent Chinese IP portal was an important announcement.
• Chipestimate.com and SMIC Showcase Chinese Domestic Semiconductor IP: It’s no secret that the Asia-Pacific Rim countries are surging ahead in the global IP marketplace, as reported by Technavio Insights. A recent TechInsights report further notes that the domestic Chinese semiconductor industry is beginning to have an impact on the $310-billion (USD) global semiconductor market. The new Chipestimate.cn site – the latest in the global expansion of ChipEstimate.com – will strengthen that impact.
• Chinese Embedded-Design Contest Offers Insight: Reviewing the list of first-, second-, and third-place winners reveals the technology direction of China’s university/industrial embedded-development community.
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