Analyzing the RISC-V CPU Market for SIP, SoCs, AI and Design Starts

The semiconductor and computer industries are undergoing an explosion of computational and silicon architectural exploration and discovery. These advances—the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) functionality, faster communications with 5G, and the deployment of sensors into all types of applications generating masses of data—are causing a dramatic rise in device and system complexity with a corresponding increase in design complexity.  In conjunction with these advances, the open standard RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) was introduced at the University of California at Berkeley in 2010.  Initially embraced by the academic community to teach students about SIP design and complex SoC silicon design, the RISC-V SIP movement has grown to be accepted by the SoC design community at large and the ISA is being used today by many companies as an alternative to other, more traditional CPU SIP types. The ability to customize the ISA to fit the application is a key differentiator for the RISC-V architecture. A new Semico Report, Analyzing the RISC-V CPU Market for SIP, SoCs, AI and Design Starts (CC330-21) forecasts that RISC-V-based AI SoCs will have a CAGR for units of 73.6% by 2027.
 
"The inclusion of AI into silicon solutions for all types of applications is a strong driver in the semiconductor market today," says Rich Wawrzyniak, Principal Analyst ASIC and SoC Research.  "By all accounts, the RISC-V architecture is making a strong impression on SoC designers and architects.  A significant portion of designs, revenues and unit shipments will come from AI SoCs that use the RISC-V architecture in the next few years."

Additional key findings include:

• AI SoC revenues are expected to reach $291B by 2027.
• AI SoC unit shipments are projected to reach 25B units by 2027.
• The SIP market revenues grew to $6.7B in 2020, a 9.8% increase from 2019.
• The CPU SIP market increased 12.8% in 2020 to $2.2B.

Semico's newest report, Analyzing the RISC-V CPU Market for SIP, SoCs, AI and Design Starts (CC330-21), looks at the existing SoC markets for Computer, Consumer and Communication applications and analyzes the potential impact RISC-V is having today and will have in the future regarding the following areas:

• The market revenues for 3^rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP), CPU SIP revenues and RISC-V SIP revenues for royalties, licensing and services
• An analysis of the revenues of the different CPU SIP architectures currently in the market
• Revenues for the SoC market, the AI SoC market and the RISC-V AI SoC market for Computer, Consumer and Communications applications, split by Advanced Performance Multicore SoCs, Value Multicore SoCs and Basic SoCs
• Unit shipments for the SoC market, the AI SoC market and the RISC-V SoC market for Computer, Consumer and Communications applications for the three types of SoC
• SoC design starts for the three application categories and the three types of SoC split for the SoC market, the AI SoC market and the RISC-V AI SoC market