UMIPS is the University of Michigan Intellectual Property Source. It was founded in 2003 and it is a collaborative effort between Electrical Engineering and Computer Science students, faculty, and researchers to leverage each others' integrated circuit development in the pursuit of cutting-edge circuits and microsystems research.

The idea behind UMIPS is design reuse and it's importance to research. There is no reason why researchers should burn time and resources developing either trivial blocks that could be reused or blocks that do not add significant value to their research. This "reinventing the wheel" syndrome of integrated circuit design is exactly the problem that the founders identified and set out to remedy.

UMIPS is about improving circuits and microsystems research at the University of Michigan and across the country. Design resuse and collaboration significantly reduces IC design cycles, increases productivity, and gets research designers and design teams to their goals - publishing meaningful contributions in the field.

The founders of UMIPS are always open suggestions to improve the repository. It is a living creation that will change with the needs of the community and will inevitably sustain itself long after the founding team has departed to tackle other challenges that the world brings.

What is IP Anyway?

IP is intellectual property. When we say IP, we really mean SIP, or semiconductor intellectual property. UMIPS manages IP in two formats: hard and soft. Hard IP is the physical blueprint for manufacturing an integrated circuit or device. Soft IP is a description of a circuit that can later be reduced to hard IP by synthesis or full-custom design.

Reuse of IP has many benefits. Imagine that if every time a house were built, the architect started from scratch. It would take forever - and he'd be going over the same ground every time. In reality, he reuses some blueprints. In fact, he might use blueprints from someone else for the kitchen or foyer, since his expertise might be in another area like the living and dining rooms. That's the idea behind IP resue and UMIPS. The only difference is that we're building circuits and microsystems.