ASIC Design Starts 2022: New Applications and AI Become Market Drivers

The ASIC design start landscape has changed due to a number of factors, one of which is the increase in NRE costs for complex ASIC designs.  Additionally, companies and silicon designers are still exploring which silicon architectures will be the best fit for applications that include AI. New business models will also be possible using the increased productivity and efficiency brought to business through the introduction of AI capabilities. If these costs can be held in check over the next process generation, it is our belief that the growth rates shown in this report  could prove to be conservative.  Semico Research's new report, ASIC Design Starts 2022: New Applications and AI Become Market Drivers (SC107-22), forecasts that total ASIC design starts will grow at a 3.7% CAGR from 2021 through 2025.
 
"Artificial Intelligence functions—such as pattern recognition, voice recognition and language translation—will become ubiquitous, check-box features in almost every end application imaginable," says Adrienne Downey, Director Technical Research for Semico. "The race is on today to embed the right amount of compute resources into discrete silicon solutions that can be included in end-point devices. If this happens, we can expect a further increase in ASIC design start growth rates beyond what Semico is forecasting today."

Key findings include:

• The worldwide ASIC market increased 10.0% in unit shipments in 2020.
• Advanced Performance Multicore SoC unit volumes will show a CAGR of 4.6% from 2020 to 2025.
• PLD unit volumes increased 18.4% in 2021.
• Worldwide FPGA ASIC Unit Volumes for the Transportation segment willl have a 15% CAGR from 2020-2025.

The report, ASIC Design Starts 2022: New Applications and AI Become Market Drivers (SC107-22), contains comprehensive data regarding the current and future ASIC design start landscape.  The report is 107 pages long with 63 tables and 68 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

• Design starts for the 9 ASIC product types by

• Two years of history (2017–2018) and a 5-year forecast (2019–2023)
• 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
• Comparison of maturing to emerging applications for design starts and unit shipments