ASIC Design Starts for 2017 by Key End Market Applications

There is a great deal of design activity around emerging AI applications both at the Cloud level and for adding this type of functionality to edge devices in the form of Voice Activated Devices like the Amazon Echo and the Google Home Assistant among others.  Initially, limited AI functionality is being added to SoCs in the form of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). However, even mid-range FPGAs can accommodate smaller CNNs and still provide good performance to the application.  Semico Research's new report, Design Starts for 2017 by Key End Market Applications, SC106-17, forecasts Artificial Intelligence Voice Activated Devices ASIC Design Starts CAGR will approach 20% by 2021.
 
"AI in the form of pattern recognition, voice recognition and language translation will find its way into almost every device and application that has a CPU, GPU, DSP, VPU or FPGA and some level of computational resources in the near future," says Rich Wawrzyniak, Senior Analyst ASIC/SoC Research. "There is demand for these types of capabilities at every level and in every market segment to some degree. We believe these capabilities will become 'check-box' items at the very least and could spark the next great surge in the semiconductor market."

Key findings of the report include:

• Worldwide ASIC market increased 7.7% in unit shipments in 2016
• Basic SoC Design starts in the Consumer segment will have over a 19% CAGR over the forecast period
• Industrial Internet of Things ASIC Design Starts will grow at over 25% over the forecast period
• Internet of Things ASIC Unit Shipments will surpass 1.8 billion units in 2018

Semico Research's new report, 'ASIC Design Starts for 2017 by Key End Market Applications', SC106-17, offers a comprehensive analysis of the ASIC design start landscape today and into the future and provide excellent data for product planning, marketing and sales activities at fabless semiconductor companies, 3^rd Party IP vendors and major OEMs and IDMs and includes:

• 73 end market applications are analyzed and organized into categories by Computer, Consumer, Communications, Industrial and Automotive.
• Nine ASIC product types including Mixed Signal, three SoC types, FPGAs and PLDs are analyzed by design starts with unit shipments for each.
• Two years of history (2015 -2016) and a 5-year forecast (2017 – 2021) are provided.