Semiconductor IP Market to Exceed $8 Billion by 2020

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

One of the mainstays of the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) market is the continued growth of the 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) market. The products developed and marketed by the SIP market enable SoC designers to create amazing cutting-edge silicon solutions employed in every niche of today’s semiconductor market. A new Semico Research report, Licensing, Royalty and Service Revenues for 3rd Party SIP: A Market Analysis and Forecast for 2016, forecasts the market to exceed $8 billion by 2020.  However, the ‘law of large numbers’ will assert itself, and the torrent of growth over the past 10 years will start to slow. 

“The number of SIP blocks in all types of SoCs continues to climb, and the number of SoCs that have SIP blocks also continues to increase each year, a sure sign of a healthy market,” said Rich Wawrzyniak, Principal Analyst for ASIC & SoC at Semico Research Corp. “It is then appropriate to focus on the individual market segments instead of only on the total market revenue to discern where the strongest growth lies,” said Wawrzyniak.

 Key findings of the report include: 

• The CPU IP market will account for 31.3% of total market revenues by 2020;
• A licensable programmable fabric is entering the market from several companies bringing new capabilities and functionality to SoC designers; 
• The Asia Pacific IP market will have a CAGR of 13.1% through 2020;
• New embeddable memory architectures are entering the market as licensable SIP, and for the first time they are supported by major silicon foundries. MRAM, STTRAM and ReRAM are poised to debut;
• The China IP market is forecast to reach $1.4 billion by 2020.