How to Choose and Integrate the Right FPGA IP Core for Your Design

Selecting an FPGA IP core is rarely a simple checkbox exercise. After all, choosing the right option shapes how your design performs and how much effort integration will require.

Each core brings its own assumptions and boundaries, so the evaluation process benefits from slowing down and looking past the surface-level feature set. What matters is how well the core aligns with your architecture and whether the implementation path supports the performance you actually need.

Here are some key factors to consider:

• Functionality: Does the IP core do what you need it to? Check its features and capabilities to ensure it aligns with your project’s requirements.
• Performance: Evaluate the core’s performance metrics, such as speed, latency, and power consumption.
• Compatibility: Ensure the IP core is compatible with your chosen FPGA, design, and development tools, such as AMD Vivado or Intel Quartus Prime.
• Vendor and Support: Consider the reputation of the IP vendor as well as past performance. A good vendor provides comprehensive documentation, technical support, and reference designs to help you integrate the core seamlessly.
• Licensing: It is important to understand the licensing model for various IP core offerings. Some IP cores are free, while others require a paid license, which can be a one-time purchase, a per-product license, or even a royalty-based agreement.

Major FPGA vendors like AMD (formerly Xilinx) and Altera have extensive IP catalogs and tools like IP Integrator to simplify the process of adding, configuring, and connecting IP cores in a block-based design flow. Other suppliers, like our team at New Wave Design, offer excellent IP core solutions that can help a program quickly implement blocks of code to interface via communications protocol, as an example.

Why Specialized IP Expertise Matters

New Wave Design focuses on complex, high-speed serial interfaces used throughout avionics and military systems. The team develops IP for demanding protocols such as ARINC 818, Mil1394 (IEEE 1394B, SAE AS5643), sFPDP, and Fibre Channel. These aren’t generic communication standards; they require deep technical knowledge and are central to applications like real-time cockpit video or deterministic data movement in weapon systems. Leveraging proven cores shortens development time and removes the burden of building and validating these protocols from scratch, especially when paired with the right evaluation approach.

Ready to integrate protocol-specific IP or explore options for your program? Reach out to New Wave Design to get started.