3D die-stacking technologies, manufacturing barriers, and growing complexities in end-use systems among the technical challenges that are expected to lift R&D growth rates through 2023.
The semiconductor business is defined by rapid technological changes and the need to maintain high levels of investment in research and development for new materials, innovative manufacturing processes for increasingly complex chip designs, and advanced IC packaging technologies.
However, since the 1980s, the long-term trend has been toward a slowdown in the annual growth rate of research and development expenditures according to data presented in the new, 2019 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (released in January 2019). Consolidation in the semiconductor industry has been a big factor contributing to lower growth rates for R&D expenditures so far this decade. In the most recent five-year span from 2013-2018, semiconductor R&D spending grew by CAGR of 3.6% per year, essentially unchanged from the 3.3% experienced from 2008-2013 (Figure 1).
Figure 1
IC Insights expects new challenges such as three-dimensional (3D) die-stacking technologies, growing complexities in end-use applications, and other significant manufacturing barriers to raise semiconductor R&D spending to a slightly higher growth rate of 5.5% per year in the 2018-2023 forecast period.
