1. Introduction

The design and manufacturing of integrated circuits is currently based on the ­integration of a number of pre-designed intellectual property (IP) blocks, or cores, in a single chip. Although the reuse has always been present in the design of electronic circuits, this practice has been extended and formalized in the last two decades or so, becoming the new design paradigm of the electronic industry. The reuse of previously designed functional blocks is now the key for the design of high performance circuits with large gate counts in a short time. Such a design practice is known as core-based or IP-based design, or simply as System-on-Chip (SoC). The main difference between a SoC and a traditional System-on-Board (SoB), which is also based on previously designed parts, is that in the former, all cores are synthesized together in a single chip, whereas in the latter each functional block is synthesized and manufactured separately, and then mounted in a discrete board. Furthermore, the reusable blocks of the SoC are also known as virtual components, since they are delivered as a description of logic rather than a manufactured IC, and this constitutes another important difference between traditional design methods and core-based systems.