IP Quality: What are you paying for?

Bill Martin, Mentor Graphics

Quality is an old concept with various definitions and diagnostic tools to help improve quality. During the 1960s, few purchased Japanese cars. Today, most prefer Japanese cars due to their reliability and lower total cost of ownership. If you want to explore quality in depth, look for material written by Deming, Juran, Crosby, etc.

The Basic Definition of Quality
The basic definition of quality is simply meeting your customer’s expectations. Note: this does NOT imply the BEST product. One example to show various levels of quality would be different hotel chains. If you stay at Hilton vs. La Quinta hotel, you have different expectations on price and overall service. Both are great hotels and I have stayed at each. But I have different quality expectations for each hotel. If you pay more money, you expect more amenities. If you receive amenities meeting or exceeding your expectations, you are happy. If you do not, you may complain to the hotel management.

What about IP quality?
Several years ago at an IP industry panel, we discussed ‘standards.’ I created a diagram of five circles surrounding the customer. I labeled these: Specification Compliance, Integration, Quality, Business and Legal. Here are brief descriptions for each.

Specification Compliance:
Does the design or IP block meet the standard’s specification (USB, SATA, Ethernet) and can it pass their SIG testing and plug fest events? Without working in this environment, your product cannot ‘touch’ the network and will provide little value to your end customer. These compliance events are regularly held around the world and final reports are created for each vendor’s tests. IP products that pass these tests should not have functional defects.

Integration:
Can the purchased IP easily fit into the design/tool flow that I use? This is different than Specification Compliance. Are standard formats, languages and scripts used for fast adoption? How much energy will it take my team to be able to use and integrate this into my design? As one software vendor states: how much drag is this IP placing on my development?

Quality:
This is quality of the IP’s bill of materials (BOM). Each IP product contains many different subcomponents to help the customer understand how to use the IP. This might include scripts, application notes, reference manuals, verification tests, etc. Quality needs to be viewed in two dimensions: Are all the pieces available? Is each piece complete and easy to understand?

Business:
These are the pricing terms – up-front licensing, royalty or a hybrid model.

Legal:
Legal issues include indemnities, warranties and other terms specifying what happens in various circumstances between the customer and supplier.

In retrospect, I should have merged the above Integration and Quality definition into Integration. Integration would concern integration with tools, other IP and with your product development team. Quality would be the summation of: Specification Compliance, Integration, Business and Legal aspects. The ‘whole enchilada’ needs to meet customers’ expectations to be successful.

When purchasing IP, make sure that you ask questions for each of these areas. GSA has some tools to help you perform due diligence. Ensure that you have the right expectations before you sign a contract otherwise: Caveat emptor.

Post your comments on your definition of quality.