Semi Market Decreased by 8% in 2023... When Design IP Sales Grew by 6%!

Design IP revenues had achieved $7.04B in 2023, with disparity between license, growing by 14% and royalty decreasing by 6%, and main categories. Processor (CPU, DSP, GPU & ISP) slightly growing by 3.4% when Physical (SRAM Memory Compiler, Flash Memory Compiler, Library and I/O, AMS, Wireless Interface) slightly decreasing (-1.4%) and Digital (System, Security and Misc. Digital) was slightly growing by 4%. Clearly, wired Interface is still driving Design IP growth with 16% to reach almost $2 billion in 2023 (after growth in the 20% during 2022, 2021 and 2020). IPnest has released the “Design IP Report” in April 2024, ranking IP vendors by category and by nature, license and royalty.

The main trend shaking the Design IP in 2023 is clear to detect in the Top 10, as IP vendors targeting consumer applications, like smartphone, shows decreasing revenues, when those enjoying interface IP products and targeting HPC and AI are growing. There is one exception and not the least, ARM is moderately growing by 5%. In fact, ARM has compensated declining royalty revenues dues to smartphone weakness by a remarkable performance in license revenues growing by 28.6%. After years spent in following phantom IoT market, ARM has realized in 2023 that the real source of growth (and profit) was with HPC and AI, and in a certain extend Automotive to eventually improve their positioning and portfolio. Also to be noticed is a strong increase at the end of 2023 from “revenues from related parties”, we can translate by “ARM China”…

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