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The continuation of new product development in the IoT category such as automotive, industrial and home automation has helped boost semiconductor unit sales in 2017.

Many of the traditional end-use applications are experiencing slower semiconductor unit growth rates due to market saturation and reduced demand.  In addition, growth rates are more moderate when the sheer volumes of a market reach levels that make it difficult to continue experiencing double-digit growth rates.  While there are new applications such as those associated with the IoT (Internet of Things) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which are expected to follow a higher growth curve over the next few years, in general, growth rates for traditional markets such as PCs and cell

The SoC market has become the largest segment of the worldwide semiconductor market and is expected to reach $169.8B by 2021, a 7.7% CAGR.  The adoption of the SoC design methodology has allowed the creation of very complex silicon solutions with rich feature sets and functionality.  However, the predicted end of 'Moore's Law' is looming over the industry as improvements, once taken for granted through process geometry gains, start to become much harder to achieve at each new process node.
 

Approximately twenty years ago, ASIC vendors were busy assimilating 0.5mm process capabilities and creating large libraries of functional blocks to be utilized in their Standard Cell product lines.  While continual advances on the process side of the semiconductor industry were well documented and even expected, the design side of the product creation equation lagged farther and farther behind process capabilities.  The semiconductor market evolved to create the SoC approach as a design methodology used the world over to allow silicon solutions of amazing complexity and functionality while