Rising market expectations are being witnessed across most IC product lines from Analog to Logic to DRAM.

IC Insights will release its March Update to the 2021 edition of The McClean Report later this month.  In addition to presenting its 2021 IC market forecast revision, the Update will also present listings of the top 40 IDM and top 50 fabless IC suppliers in 2020.  This data was used to determine the “final” worldwide IC market figure for 2020, which was raised from 10% to 13% growth as compared to 2019.

The remaining portion of the March Update will include newly revised 2021-2025 forecasts by product type as well as updated semiconductor industry capital spending forecasts by company for 2021.

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Despite high development costs, smaller nodes bring greater revenue per wafer.

The success and proliferation of integrated circuits has largely hinged on the ability of IC manufacturers to continue offering more performance and functionality for the money.  Driving down the cost of ICs (on a per-function or per-performance basis) is inescapably tied to a growing arsenal of technologies and wafer-fab manufacturing disciplines as mainstream CMOS processes reach their theoretical, practical, and economic limits.

Data presented in IC Insights’ 2021 edition of The McClean Report (released in January 2021), notes that many fabless IC companies are clamoring to have their leading-edge devices, including high-performance microprocessors, low-power application processors, and other advanced logic devices, fabricated using 7nm and 5nm process nodes.  Some of the current iterations from logic and foundry suppliers are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

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