A novel IP quality evaluation method based on IP function

A novel IP quality evaluation method is proposed in this paper. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of several current mainstream IP quality evaluation metrics, advantages and deficiencies of them are summarized. The comparison indicates that due to coarse grain of classification and focusing more on common features, the definition methods of these metrics are lack of individual characteristics representation, especially the functional part. By analyzing the features of different kinds of IPs, a third party IP quality evaluation metric based on IP design flow and IP functional classification is addressed. Furthermore, the classification method as well as its feasibility is explained in detail. Finally, IP quality evaluation procedure of a specific soft embedded processor IP core is presented based on the proposed method.