Reusable Analog Intellectual Property (IP)

Reusable analog intellectual property (IP) refers to analog and mixed-signal IP blocks that can be reused across multiple chips. They may be designed by a chip vendor or licensed from a third-party IP vendor or a design services company. Typical analog IP blocks include, for example, operational amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, phase-locked loops, delay-locked loops, serializer/deserializer transceivers, filters, voltage references, radio-frequency modules, voltage regulators and analog comparators. While some functions such as data converters have become quite viable as IP functions, others have not from the reusability point of view.