ASIC Design Starts: Growing Applications and AI Drive the Market

SoC design methodology has been affected by EDA vendors who have been active in proposing several changes and improvements that encompass analyzing the SoC design process as a complete—SIP creation, SIP integration, SoC design, applications software development, and EDA tools required to manage the total design process.  What empowers this vision is the advent of the SIP Subsystem integration as an element of the SoC design process.  Without the SIP Subsystem concept as a key element of SoC silicon creation, it is doubtful that increases in design costs could be moderated while still increasing complexity levels to meet market requirements.  Semico Research's new report, ASIC Design Starts: Growing Applications and AI Drive the Market (SC107-23) forecasts that ASIC design starts will continue to increase to meet the demand for more evolved, better performing products in all markets with automotive/transportation having the highest CAGR at 4.8% from 2022 through 2027.
 
"In terms of ASIC unit volumes, transportation and industrial will have the highest CAGRs, but communications will remain the largest category at almost half of the total market," according to Jim Feldhan, President, Semico Research. "Growth will be seen in lower-complexity applications like IIoT, IoT, wearables, and the smart grid; this will moderate the average gate density over time.  In addition, ASPs of these products will also be somewhat lower, and revenues will depend more on volume.  Higher-complexity applications such as AI, ADAS, and 5G infrastructure will help offset the impact of the high-volume/low-complexity designs and unit volumes." 
 
Key findings include:

• The worldwide ASIC unit market for the categories in the study will show a 5.9% CAGR from 2022–2027.
• PLD unit volumes are forecast to increase 8.9% in 2023.
• FPGA unit shipments are projected to show a 6.2% CAGR through 2027.
• 50% of the Value Multicore SoC design starts today occur in North America and Japan.

The report, ASIC Design Starts: Growing Applications and AI Drive the Market (SC107-23), contains comprehensive data regarding the current and future ASIC design start landscape.  The report is 94 pages long with 60 tables and 65 charts covering the following key metrics:

• End market applications:

           *Computer
           *Consumer
           *Communications
           *Industrial, and
           *Automotive

• ASIC product types analyzed by design starts with unit shipments for:

           *Analog and Mixed Signal
           *3 SoC types
           *FPGAs and PLDs
           *Gate Arrays and Structured ASICs

• Design starts for the 9 ASIC product types by

• Two years of history (2020–2022) and a 5-year forecast (2023–2027)
• A comparison between 1^st time SoC design starts and SoC derivative designs
• Definitions for the three types of standard SoCs and for SoCs with AI functionality added