ASIC and FPGA Design and Verification Trends 2020

Harry Foster and I started in semiconductors at the same time so it was great to reminisce while talking about the latest Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Trend reports. Before I get into the reports lets talk about Harry who is a verification superstar:

Harry is Chief Scientist Verification for the Design Verification Technology Division of Mentor, A Siemens Business; and is the Co-Founder and Executive Editor for the Verification Academy. In addition, Harry is serving as the 2021 Design Automation Conference General Chair. He holds multiple patents in verification and has co-authored six books on verification. Harry was the 2006 recipient of the Accellera Technical Excellence Award for his contributions to developing industry standards and was the original creator of the Accellera Open Verification Library (OVL) standard.

There are two reports, one for ASIC and one for FPGA design. I’m more of an ASIC design person so I was not surprised with the ASIC report.  I’m not an FPGA design person so I was quite surprised with some of the FPGA findings on Non-trivial bug escapes. A little frightening actually. Both reports are available on the Mentor website. You can get the ASIC report HERE and the FPGA report HERE. Harry also did a webinar 2020 Wilson Research Group Verification Survey Results which you can find HERE.

Overview:

The 2019 global semiconductor market was valued at $385.4 billion after experiencing a 15% decline due to a 32% drop in the memory IC market, which is expected to recover in 2021. The IC/ASIC portion of the semiconductor market is valued at about $186.6 billion. The IC/ASIC semiconductor market is expected to reach a value of $233.4 billion by 2024, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6% during this forecast period. In contrast, the FPGA portion of the semiconductor market is valued at about $5 billion and is expected to reach a value of $7.5 billion by 2030, growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.4% during this forecast period. While COVID-19 has had a negative impact in 2020 on a number of market segments (e.g., consumer and automotive), other market segments (e.g., data center computing, networking, storage, and communication) are experiencing positive growth required to support today’s growing work-from-home (WFH) environment.

Ensuring functional correctness is still one of the biggest challenges for both the ASIC/IC and FPGA markets. To quantify this, every two years, Mentor, A Siemens Business commissions Wilson Research Group to conduct a broad, vendor-independent study of design verification practices around the world. In this presentation, Harry Foster highlights the key findings from the 2020 Wilson Research Group Functional Verification Study and provides his interpretation and analysis behind today’s emerging trends. The findings from this study provide invaluable insight into the state of today’s IC/ASIC and FPGA markets in terms of both design and verification trends.

What You Will Learn:

• Latest industry ASIC and FPGA trends in design
• Latest industry ASIC and FPGA trends in verification
• An analytical interpretation of the study results

Bottom line:  It’s a good report with a huge amount of history behind it and is definitely worth the reading time. Just a quick disclaimer, while looking at trends is important, trends are just one piece of the puzzle. If you want to drill down further SemiWiki is the best place. We are staffed by semiconductor design professionals and if we don’t have the answers you are looking for we certainly know someone (like Harry Foster) who does, absolutely.

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