> And also at least a basic understanding of how IP is managed in chip industry - like "IP core" is a term that I frequently hear but due to the myriad interpretations available online, I don't really understand what an "IP core" really means.
I'm by no means a veteran but my understanding is that "IP core" refers to a design you buy from someone else. Say you want a video encoder on your smart fridge SoC. You can either spend a whole lot of time, manpower and money developing one yourself or you can license the design from someone else who already has one and just dump it in.
You'd only do this when you want to integrate the design into your own (likely mass manufactured) chip. You can also often buy a packaged chip that serves the same function for much less but doing that is a tradeoff. You can do it at very low volume and cost but you potentially lose a bunch of efficiency in terms of space and power.
That is my understanding as well. In a commercial setting, reinventing the wheel is economically a bad idea. For the company licensing the IP core, the licence revenues are another form of return on investment for the design effort. Companies, like ARM, are "fab-less", i.e. they create IP cores and license them to semi manufacturers.
I'm by no means a veteran but my understanding is that "IP core" refers to a design you buy from someone else. Say you want a video encoder on your smart fridge SoC. You can either spend a whole lot of time, manpower and money developing one yourself or you can license the design from someone else who already has one and just dump it in.
You'd only do this when you want to integrate the design into your own (likely mass manufactured) chip. You can also often buy a packaged chip that serves the same function for much less but doing that is a tradeoff. You can do it at very low volume and cost but you potentially lose a bunch of efficiency in terms of space and power.