Sculley's remarks underscore the difficulty in defining explicitly what IP means to a complex industry. Doug is also the vice president, Strategic Programs, at Cadence Design Systems and a leader in recasting the fuzziness of IP issues into the concept of virtual components. So, Doug, first tell us about the VSI Alliance. Membership is open to any corporation with an interest in the development and promotion of open standards used in the design of system chips. Virtual components are preimplemented, reusable modules of intellectual property that can be quickly inserted and verified to create a single-chip system.
Virtual components support design reuse requirements.
That virtual components allow design reuse. Design reuse closes the productivity gap and enables the design of complex system-chips. The efficient design of system-chips promotes growth in electronics. With more than 150 member companies, VSIA represents an industry mandate to solve the technical problems of design reuse. Inevitably, in every engineering discipline, reuse has needed to be employed in order to build larger, more complex structures.