2022 Wilson Research Group IC/ASIC functional verification trends

Introduction

This report presents integrated circuit (IC) and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) functional verification trends based on the 2022 Wilson Research Group functional verification study, which is a continuation of a series of industry studies that have occurred over the past twenty years. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] For our 2022 study, we have separated FPGA from IC/ASIC functional verification trends, and this report focuses on the latter.

A. The global IC/ASIC semiconductor market

IBS estimates that the global semiconductor market was valued at $547 billion in 2021. While the market is expected to decline to $545 billion in 2023, it is optimistically projected to grow to a value of $635 billion by 2025. The IC/ASIC portion of the semiconductor market, excluding FPGA, is valued at about $282.2 billion. [8] The IC/ASIC semiconductor market is expected to reach a value of $330.9 billion by 2025. One key factor driving the global semiconductor market is that the 5G smartphone market is expected to go into high growth.

B. Study background

The study results presented in this report are a continuation of a series of industry studies on functional verification. This series includes the previously published 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 Wilson Research Group functional verification studies. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7] Each of these studies was modeled after the 2002 and 2004 Collett International Research, Inc. studies. [1,2]

For the purpose of our study, a randomized sampling frame was constructed from multiple acquired industry lists. This enabled us to cover all regions of the world and all relevant electronics industry market segments. It is important to note that we did not include our own account team’s customer list in the sampling frame. This was done in a deliberate attempt to prevent vendor bias in the final results. While we architected the study in terms of questions and then compiled and analyzed the results, we commissioned Wilson Research Group to execute our study. After data cleaning the results to remove inconsistent, incomplete, or random responses, the final sample size consisted of 980 eligible participants (i.e., n=980).