Standards: The P1685 IP-XACT IP Metadata Standard

The paper aims to develop an XML-based standard for describing electronic intellectual property - that is, blocks of electronic logic suitable for inclusion in complex integrated circuits, commonly know as systems on chips (SoCs). This work, which is based on the Spirit Consortium´s IP-XACT specification, has transferred to the IEEE for standardization. The IP-XACT specification provides a metadata schema for describing IP, enabling it to be compatible with automated integration techniques, and an API for tool access to this schema. Tools that implement the standard would be able to automatically interpret, configure, integrate, and manipulate IP blocks that are delivered with metadata that conforms to the proposed IP metadata description, and the IP-XACT APIs provides a standard method for linking multiple tools through a single exchange-metadata format. This automatic integration of tools and IP from multiple vendors creates an IP-XACT-enabled environment