Intellectual Properties Integration: The Past, the Present, and the Future

Intellectual properties (IPs) integration is becoming more challenging due to the increasing complexity of systems on chip as well as their components. Since no survey is available about this topic, this paper is written to help recently interested researchers in the field to have an idea about IP integration. This paper tries to put the light on IP integration challenges over time and how researchers and industrials have dealt with every challenge. On the other hand, the emergence of the standard IP-XACT for packaging, integrating, and reusing intellectual properties has enabled the development of many integration tools and the enhancement of the already existing ones. In this regard, different solutions are presented in this paper before and after the emergence of the standard enriched with a discussion of different proposed solutions including an attempt to define what is needed to be done else. At the end, the paper concludes by considering a promising tendency that hopefully will mitigate some of IP integration gaps.