IPextreme Core Store simplifies IP shopping

By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- 1/21/2008

IP resellers IPextreme is trying to make purchasing IP a bit more simplistic, as the company is offering a selection of its cores through a new feature called Core Store.

IPextreme’s business model is to commercialize IP from companies that have traditionally developed IP for their internal use but don’t have, or don’t want to develop, the infrastructure to license IP commercially. IPextreme works with the vendors to bundle the cores with software and models to make the IP commercially viable. IPextreme then supports the cores.

Since its founding, the company has been successful in offering IP from vendors such as Cypress Semiconductor, Freescale Semiconductor, and National Semiconductor, among others. Traditionally, licensing pieces of those IP required some amount of negotiation with IPextreme and perhaps the original developers/providers of the IP. But now with the Core Store, according to Warren Savage, IPextreme’s founder and CEO, customers can license and then download cores directly from IPextreme’s website without having to speak with a salesperson. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Core Store is the prices for the cores are transparent.

To use the Core Store, customers fill out a generic licensing agreement once. After that they can simply go to the Core Store, browse which pieces of IP they want to purchase, place those cores into a shopping cart, and pay for the cores with a credit card. They then download an encrypted version of the core. The experience is similar to other online retail sites such as Amazon.com.

IPextreme is initially launching Core Store with 10 cores. At its launch, the feature IP from Core Store is Freescale Semiconductor’s newly launched ColdFire V1 microcontroller. The other cores are mainly peripherals developed by National Semiconductor. “Those [peripheral] cores in the Core Store are sold for an order of magnitude lower than they are typically sold for using the traditional sales process,” said Savage. “The reason we are able to do this is a combination of the maturity of the IP and the technology we’ve put together in packaging that IP so that customers should be able to download it and use it … they should be ready to go.”

Savage noted that the company is offering only base version of the V1 through Core Store for a $10,000 single use license, but if customers want a more advanced version of the offering or want to add options they will need to go through the traditional channels and contact IPextreme (and eventually a Freescale salesperson).

Savage said that he expects vendors and customers will really take to the simple sales offering and he expects to add new cores to the core stores every quarter.

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