A Rare Offer from The SHD Group – A Complimentary Look at the RISC-V Market

The web is a wonderful place to find information on almost any topic. While top-level information is easy to find, a deep dive often requires the services of a market research firm. These organizations specialize in “going deep” on many technology topics, offering insights not available with a Google search. And these services aren’t typically free. Access to focused research can get pricey. So, when a top-drawer research firm offers an 80-page report on a topic as hot as RISC-V for free, that gets my attention. Read on to learn about a rare offer from the SHD Group – a complimentary look at the RISC-V market.

About The SHD Group

The SHD Group was formed about four years ago. The organization brings together skills and services that focus on go-to-market strategies, marketing, market analysis, business development, sales pipeline building and closure on profitable opportunities. It operates across a range of markets, including AI, semiconductor, smart sensors, RISC-V, consumer and automotive.

The leadership team has decades of experience spanning all of these areas and more. The company offers first-hand executive experience, know-how and expertise in AI “from Edge to Cloud & back”.  You can learn more about the breadth and depth of experience offered by this team here. I want to take a moment to focus on the author of the RISC-V report.

Rich Wawrzyniak brings over 35 years of semiconductor industry experience to the organization. Previously, Rich spent 20 years focusing on market analysis at Semico Research. His demonstrated skills span sales management to corporate planning, with an expertise in ASICs, SoCs, SIP, memory, and design starts, as well as emerging areas like AI, RISC-V, and chiplets.

I personally know Rich from his time at Semico when I was in both ASIC and EDA. I have great memories of many in-depth conversations that lead to insightful analysis that helped the companies I worked for in measurable ways. Rich has an inquisitive and highly analytical nature – he gets to the facts that matter and presents results with compelling detail and accuracy. All this fueled my enthusiasm when I found out some of his work was being offered to all for free. This is a great opportunity.

About the RISC-V Report

I attended the recent RISC-V Summit and I can tell you the movement is gaining momentum fast. Open source has found its way into mainstream chip design. It’s exciting to watch. There are a lot of moving parts across many markets, so a comprehensive report that puts all this into perspective is quite valuable. The report offers a top-level, global market view, containing 80 pages, 30 tables, 16 figures and an accompanying ecosystem guide.

Some highlights covered in the report include:

RISC-V SoC Market Growth

• RISC-V-based SoC unit shipments are forecast to surge to 16.2B units, with revenues reaching $92B by 2030, boasting CAGRs of 44% and 47%, respectively

SoC Market Growth

• SoC architectures utilizing third-party IP exhibit substantial growth in units and revenues across industrial, automotive, networking, computer, consumer, and other categories, notably driven by the burgeoning AI market
• Projections indicate SoC unit shipments reaching 69B units and revenues hitting $416B by 2030, showcasing CAGRs of 12.5% and 8.7%, respectively

SoC Design Starts

• SoC design starts for SoCs using RISC-V CPU cores are forecast to reach 1,371 designs by 2030, a 15.7% CAGR
• Design starts for consumer applications are expected to show the largest number of designs by 2030, with computer and networking applications following closely behind

Third-Party IP Market

• In 2022, the worldwide IP market reached $7.9B, marking an 8.4% growth from 2021. Forecasts predict a 5.3% increase to $8.3B in 2023, projecting a potential $15B market by 2030, with a CAGR of 9%
• The central processing unit (CPU) IP market soared by 22.4% in 2022 to $2.7B and is anticipated to hit $5.8B by 2030, demonstrating a robust 10.4% CAGR
• RISC-V IP revenues surged to $156M in 2023, with an estimated CAGR of 39.5% through 2030

Comments from the Author

 I had the opportunity to chat with the report’s author, Rich Wawrzyniak recently. I was looking for a more color about how the report was developed and some candid comments from Rich regarding what he discovered. First, Rich explained this was a large project. He surveyed and spoke with about 32 companies spanning IP vendors, software companies, EDA companies, device manufacturers, and end users.  A huge amount of data was compiled as a result of this exercise.

I asked Rich if there were any surprises in the results. He mentioned one regarding classification in the IP segment. It turns out the third largest segment here is do-it-yourself. That is, those who weren’t using a specific RISC-V vendor but rather building their own design. While this type of behavior doesn’t scale well, it highlights the substantial amount of exploration that is going on in the market today around RISC-V.

And that fact illuminates some of the unique attributes of the emerging RISC-V market. We spent some time discussing the impact AI has had here. Rich explained that the ability to customize the ISA extensions RISC-V offers SoC designers allows for fine-tuning of the ISA to more fully support the fast-paced AI algorithm developments that are now occurring in the market.

He went on to say that using this capability, SoC designers can more closely tailor their silicon solutions to match changing market requirements. This is especially important when they are considering development of domain-specific solutions for a wide range of applications. How that accelerator is built will have a dramatic impact on the success of any new AI technology. It’s all about speed and power efficiency. And every new idea has its own unique set of success factors.

The extensible nature of the RISC-V architecture and the rich community of innovators fuel the impact this movement is having on product development. A perfect storm of innovation supply and demand if you will. Rich felt this market is just on the cusp of explosive growth. Where all this takes us is hard to predict, but watching the progress will be quite exciting.

RISC-V International encouraged The SHD Group to launch this analysis effort and did encourage its membership to speak with the organization. The full version is likely the most comprehensive analysis of the RISC-V market available today. Rich has a long history of developing world-class market research – this project represents some outstanding and important work. 

To Learn More

You can download your complimentary copy of the 80-page report here.

The extensive full report spanning over 225 pages with 107 tables and 89 figures is also available for purchase. This report provides detailed insights into the current and future projections of the RISC-V market up to 2030. It covers most aspects of the RISC-V market, including end applications, device types, design starts, IP and global projections by region. The report is intended to provide a valuable analysis for business strategists, investors, and technology companies that require deep analysis and granular data. To purchase the full report, email info@theshdgroup.com.

And those are the details about a rare offer from the SHD Group – a complimentary look at the RISC-V market.