ASIC Design Starts By Key End Market Application

The end of 2008 saw dramatic changes in the ASIC design start landscape as end market demand for both silicon solutions and the unit volumes associated with those solutions evaporated quickly in the face of the worldwide financial meltdown. Many designs that were underway were either cancelled outright or were suspended pending a recovery in the end markets. Starting at the end of 1Q09, the market decline halted, markets stabilized and came roaring back in the second half of 2009 and into 2010.

The net result of these changes have had a profound affect on the ASIC Design Start markets as companies first suspended their design efforts and then restarted their efforts – all within a span of approximately nine months.

Another result of this tumult is the repartitioning of the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) market into three categories instead of the traditional two categories. Performance SoCs become Advanced Performance Multicore SoCs. Value SoCs become Value Multicore SoCs and a new category of SoC, the Basic SoC is created. These changes reflect the new ways silicon designers are crafting their silicon solutions to meet changing market requirements and increasing design costs. The new definitions reflect the trends towards using multiple CPU cores in the end silicon to increase performance and the extensive use of on-chip Interconnects to tie these CPU cores together. The new Basic SoC category is a reflection of the increasing use of CPU cores from 3rd Party Intellectual Property (SIP) vendors on Micro Controllers that had previously used proprietary CPUs to increase performance and reduce design cycle times.

These changes and many more are outlined in a new report from Semico Research Corp. entitled: ASIC Design Starts by Key End Market Applications, SC104-10, August 2010.

This report looks at changes and trends in 71 end applications concentrated in the Computer, Consumer, Communications, Transportation and Industrial market categories. The report tracks the design starts and unit shipments of nine different types of ASIC products; Analog, Mixed Signal, Gate Array, Advanced Performance Multicore SoCs, Value Multicore SoCs, Basic SoCs, PLDs, FPGAs and Structured ASICs used in the profiled applications. Forecasts for all end applications, ASIC design starts and unit shipments are given through 2014 using 2009 as a base year.

Some of the data discussed in 155 pages with 144 tables and 76 graphs are:

• Total ASIC design starts fell 5.2% in 2009, while Semico is forecasting a return to growth with an increase of 9.1% in 2010.
• Total ASIC design starts are forecast to show a CAGR of 7.6% from 2010 – 2014.
• The number of ‘first time’ designs in the SoC market dropped 16.6% in 2009 while derivative SoC designs dropped only 7.8%.
• The fastest growing category of silicon solution is the Basic SoC at a CAGR of 20.2%
• The largest end market for ASIC design starts is the Communications market with 39.6% of the total.
• The fastest growing market category is the Transportation segment with a CAGR of 10.7%.

This initial discussion of the ASIC Design Start market is followed up by another Semico report; ASIC Design Starts: Recovery in the markets, SC105-10, August 2010, that looks at design complexity, gate counts, starts by process geometry, regional design starts and gives forecasts for design starts and unit shipments by ASIC product type and end market category.