VSI standards: using them today, planning for tomorrow

The VSI Alliance has made significant progress in standardizing the data to be created by a virtual component (VC) provider and passed to a system chip integrator. The VC provider is the author of a block, who completes the design of the VC as a stand-alone block, prepares a number of data files describing the block, then passes those data files to a system chip integrator. The system chip integrator is responsible for the design of a chip which may use a number of different VCs, each of which is described by the VSI deliverables. This paper describes the standards which are available today for the VSI deliverables and how they can be used. It also provides an update on the work currently going on in VSI.