RISC-V Cores to Approach 115% CAGR from 2020 to 2025, Says Semico Research

The semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) market is an integral part of the semiconductor industry. Third-party IP has propelled the industry, opening the door for many new products from start-ups to established IDMs. Enabling increasingly complex devices, reducing the cost of product development and reducing the time to market for both leading-edge and mature products are just a few of the benefits of third-party IP. RISC-V open instruction set architecture (ISA) allows users to customize and adapt cores to their own specific applications and provide the opportunity for unique differentiation. New research from Semico Research RISC-V Market: Momentum Building (CC319-21) forecasts that the compound annual growth rate for RISC-V cores between 2020 and 2025 will approach 115%.
 
"The RISC-V Foundation was established to promote industry adoption and ecosystem collaboration of the RISC-V ISA", says Jim Feldhan, President of Semico Research. In order to gain a better perspective on the current situation, industry perception and future outlook, Semico Research surveyed industry players.
 
Adrienne Downey, Director of Technology Research, Semico Research headed up the survey effort. Questions revolved around the use and adoption of the RISC-V ISA and its implementation. The Semico team analyzed the survey data to develop a forecast for the number of RISC-V cores that will be consumed by the market. “Semico’s survey results indicated increasing interest and significant ongoing developments for RISC-V products in all major end applications,” says Ms. Downey.

Key findings include:

• The tablet PC RISC-V SAM CAGR from 2020 through 2025 will be 68.7%.
• The total computer RISC-V SAM will increase from 531 million units in 2020 to 8.5 billion by 2025.
• The low-end smartphone SAM will grow to 7.9 billion in 2025.
• The category with the highest overall RISC-V growth rate is transportation.

Semico's new report is titled RISC-V Market: Momentum Building (CC319-21). Thirty-five target markets are analyzed including the impact of economic trends such as economic downturns/upturns, cost of goods, employment statistics and a plethora of other data, which all impact the health of business and consumer spending. Survey results the range of complexity and the number of type of designs underway by the respondents. The report is 105 pages in length and includes 81 tables and 93 figures with forecasts out to 2025.