Let’s tip our glass of champagne to 2016, which started off on a high note for the EDA industry. The EDA Consortium’s Market Statistics Service (MSS) reported revenue for Q3 2015 increased 7.1 percent to $1957.5 million compared to $1828.1 million in Q3 2014.
Coverage of our news was positive on our industry onlines and elsewhere, though there was an interesting “first” in the numbers that deserves highlighting. In Q3 2015, the Semiconductor IP (SIP) segment showed the highest revenue out of all categories tracked by the MSS at $653 million. For the first time, SIP exceeded Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) at $635 million.
What a difference 20 years makes! Back in Q3 1996, SIP was the smallest revenue category being tracked and showed $15 million in revenue. Taken over the past 20 years, the SIP segment has grown, on average, at 20% per year –– a seemingly remarkable achievement. Or is it?
The IP revolution has been underway for quite some time and has had a profound impact on electronics design. Chips now are a collection of small and large blocks of IP stitched together along with value-added circuitry created by the chip design team. It is not uncommon to find that IP blocks make up 60-70% or even more of the real estate on these large chip designs.
