By Peter Clarke, eeNews Europe
March 25, 2020
In terms of revenues for up-front technology licensing for semiconductor intellectual property (IP) Synopsys outperformed ARM in 2019, according to figures from market analysis firm IPnest.
ARM continued to lead the market to market in total IP revenues because it vastly outperforms its competitors with royalties on the billions of ARM IP cores shipped each year. However, in a now familiar pattern, ARM's total IP revenue declined slightly in 2019 in a market that grew. This is similar to what happened in both 2018 and 2017.
The reason for ARM's decline was not the arrival of RISC-V alternatives but rather the growing significance of non-processor forms of IP, according to IPnest principal Eric Esteve, who has produced a substantial annual report on the state of the semiconductor IP market in 2019.