System-on-Chip Test Equipment Market – Drivers and Forecasts

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Technavio analysts forecast the global system-on-chip (SoC) test equipment market to grow at a CAGR of more than 2% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global SoC test measurement market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, Technavio analysts consider the revenue generated from the sales of the SoC test equipment.

The demand for SoC test equipment is increasing because of the increasing use of digitization. Digitization allows electronic devices to exchange information in a digital format, which drives the development of small portable electronic devices that consume less power by integrating different features, reducing the size of semiconductor ICs, and lowering IC power consumption. The increasing automation across industries is leading to higher electronic content in devices. As a result, the complexity of SoCs is increasing at a rapid pace, which is driving the demand for SoC test equipment.

Technavio’s sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Technavio hardware and semiconductor analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global SoC test measurement market:

Emergence of IoT

Internet of things (IoT) is the system of interrelated devices or things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity. It involves machine-to-machine (M2M) communication enabling devices to exchange and act upon information by eliminating human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

Navin Rajendra, an industry expert in semiconductor equipment from Technavio, says, “IoT devices are equipped with memory, a microcontroller, wireless connectivity, and sensors. All these four components can function together in an SoC designed specifically for the IoT. Initially, custom embedded solutions offered the possibility to design just the desired features at a higher engineering cost to minimize the total cost of the device.”

Miniaturization of electronic devices

Vendors are focusing on manufacturing small portable electronic devices that consume less power by integrating different features, reducing the size of semiconductor ICs, and lowering IC power consumption. At present semiconductors with circuit line widths in the 20-nm range are used in electronic devices. The introduction of ultra-miniature circuits, with line widths in the 10-nm range, has increased their distribution in electronic devices.

“SoC field-programmable devices arrays constitute hard embedded processor cores and complex programmable logic devices. These devices are important in the miniaturization of electronic components. They offer lower power use and faster processing speed. Intel acquired Altera on December 28, 2015, specifically to acquire this FPGA technology,” adds Navin.

Increased demand for SoC test products in consumer electronics

The consumer electronics industry is growing significantly due to the rising demand for smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other smart devices. Continuing growth of mobile phones and tablets has led to changes throughout the semiconductor supply chain and automated test equipment industry.

Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon Wear 2100 SoC on February 11, 2016. This Snapdragon Wear platform extends its progress in wearables technology by providing sleek designs, long battery life, smart sensing and connected experiences in the next generation of wearable devices.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.