In electronic design and electronic design automation, an intellectual property (IP) block—or IP core—is a unit of reusable design, the use of which has been licensed to a third party. The term is derived from the licensing of the intellectual property rights, such as patents and copyrights, which subsist in the design.
IP cores are for hardware design what libraries are for computer programming. They are typically used much in the style and manner of a discrete integrated circuit on a printed circuit board (PCB), where the "circuit board" is a larger ASIC or FPGA design. An IP core commonly takes the form of a computer program written in some hardware description language (HDL)—such as Verilog, VHDL, or SystemC—but it can also be a netlist or physical layout, especially in analog electronics.
Altera provides a wide range of IP cores designed to implement industry-standard designs (such as a USB controller or echo cancellation circuitry) and to speed system engineering. Altera® IP cores are designed to take advantage of the unique features of FPGAs.
Altera offers IP megafunctions for the following technology types:
- Embedded Processors (Nios® II processors, microcontrollers)
- Interfaces & Peripherals (DDR2, PCI, PCI Express)
- DSP [fast Fourier transform (FFT)]
- Communications (various physical layers)
View the full listing of available IP cores at the Altera IP MegaStore.
IP Core Requests
The Altera University Program provides Altera-developed IP at no charge to qualified research projects at major univerisities worldwide. Please contact university@altera.com for more information.
