RF: Will it ever be plug-in IP?

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一篇值得看的文章： RFIC 將會成為 Reuse RF IP.
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來源：http://www.edn.com/article/CA6566533.html

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, P- u9 u+ S' u/ q! O/ s6 G3 }As SOCs for mobile devices integrate radio circuits, they will need to reuse RF IP. But will they be able to?
- w5 K% N0 P  T8 [3 w4 G; G; A; fBy Ron Wilson, Executive Editor -- EDN, 6/12/2008
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# g, }' a" z& I/ x2 yFor the next generation of smart phones, mobile video players, and roaming Web accessories, integration means not just placing multipurpose basebands onto the same SOC (system on chip) with the application processor, accelerators, and memory, but also integrating the small-signal RF circuits of many radios onto the SOC. And therein lies a challenge.

In today’s SOCs, reusing silicon IP (intellectual property) is absolutely necessary to meet schedules and maintain reasonable design complexity. But, although IP reuse is well-understood in the digital world and has even become common for some very-high-frequency blocks, such as SERDES (serializer-deserializer) functions for high-speed I/O and PLLs (phase-locked loops) in all sorts of applications, design reuse is virtually unknown for RF circuits in radio applications. Why? And can you do anything about it? Or will the next generation of SOCs for mobile devices have to be largely custom chips?
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