Integration adds value for device and product manufacturers and consumers.
By incorporating SOC designs, manufacturers can reduce device and product size, use fewer components, lower power consumption, and increase reliability. The number of SOC designs continues to grow, showing up in new products from cell phones to PC graphics chipsets and multimedia devices. The microprocessor is the fundamental element in SOC, to which is added various blocks of embedded memory, random logic, and mixed-signal circuitry depending on the application. Designing SOC usually involves mixing pre-defined IP blocks from different sources, and then adding proprietary IP to create a specific application. But mixing major functional blocks from different sources can make integration difficult.