20 August 2003 Scottsdale, AZ Lightwave -- With their use of a true standard cell approach that affords a relatively large number of gates to program, while also including certain embedded hard-core functions such as static RAM and/or MPU, worldwide merchant market dollar shipments of structured ASIC products are forecast to grow from the $5.2 million reached last year to $460.3 million by 2007. According to high-tech market research firm In-Stat/MDR, this will translate to a forecast compound annual growth rate (CAGR), over the 2002 to 2007 forecast period, of 144.9%.
"A void has been created between the use of high-complexity FPGAs and cell-based designs," says Jerry Worchel, a senior analyst with In-Stat/MDR. "This void, while being somewhat related to performance, by and large, is related to unit volumes per design. The structured ASIC represents the next logical step for meeting these types of product volume requirements, as well as representing an appropriate evolutionary path for gate array technology, as a whole."
In-Stat/MDR has also found the following:
- As is the case for most product markets these days, the communications sector will dominate structured ASIC consumption, with the majority of applications being in the networking infrastructure and cellular base stations. The structured ASIC communications market will account for slightly more than one-half of all product dollars shipped, between 2002 and 2007. The second largest end-use category for structured ASICs will be EDP, with the largest application being in storage.
- On the geographic side, the Americas will dominate product consumption, accounting for more than one-half of all product dollars. The remaining three regions will all grow at a higher rate than that of the Americas, with Asia-Pacific outpacing all of the regions, relative to structured ASIC dollar consumption.
- Of the three major product structured ASIC categories -- conventional gate array, embedded array (or embedded array in a cell-based design), and structured ASIC -- only the structured ASIC segment will see its worldwide revenues continually grow over the forecast period, reaching a 36.4% market share by 2007, an increase of 35.9 percentage points from 2002.