Glossaries

Definitions

Table of contents

Monitor objectives

Scope of the Market Monitor

Report methodology

About the authors

Companies cited in this report

What we got right, What we got wrong

Who should be interested by this report

Executive summary

General Market Overview

• Mega Trends
  • Market Adjustment
  • Covid 19
  • Supply Chain Disruption
  • Pricing
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automotive Electrification and IntelligenceRISC-V
  • Hybrid MCUs
  • Performance Trends
  • Ultra-low-power
  • High Reliability and Secure MCU Class Trends
• Summary Market Forecast
  • Class and Market comparisons
  • Revenue, Units, ASPs
  • High-reliability MCU, Multimarket MCU, Secure MCU
  • Quarterly and Annual quantified forecast
  • Market drivers, and critical influences

Featured MCU Market Discussion – RISC-V

Detailed Market Analysis

• Automotive
• Mobility
• Consumer
• Personal Data Processing
• Smartcard/Secure MCU
• Enterprise Data Processing
• Telecommunications Infrastructure
• Defense & Aerospace
• Medical
• Industrial and Other

Integrated Design Manufacturing and Foundry Services

• Quarterly and Annual quantified forecast
• Die Units By Process Node
• Wafer Production by Process Node
• Die by Wafer Size
• IDM vs Foundry
• Die vs Wafer Comparison
• Leading Foundry Historical Comparison

Market Share & Supply Chain

• Regional
• Competitive Landscape
  • Top Ten Overall Supplier Share
  • Top Ten 4/8/16-bit Supplier Share
  • Top Ten 32-bit Supplier Share
  • Top Ten High-Reliability MCU Class Supplier Share
  • Top Ten Multimarket MCU Class Supplier Share
  • Top Ten Secure MCU Class Supplier Share
  • Top Five Automotive Market
  • Top Five Mobility Market
  • Top Five Consumer Market
  • Top Five Personal Data Processing Market
  • Top Five Telecommunications Infrastructure Market
  • Top Five Enterprise Data Processing Market
  • Top Five Defense and Aerospace Market
  • Top Five Medical Market
  • Top Five Smartcard/Secure MCU
  • Top Five Industrial & Other

MCU Designer Profiles

• Number 1 – Renesas
• Number 2 – NXP
• Number 3 – Infineon
• Number 4 – STMicroelectronics
• Number 5 – Microchip
• Number 6 – Texas Instruments
• Number 7 – Samsung
• Number 8 – Nuvoton
• Number 9 – Silicon Labs
• Number 10 – CEC Huada

Technology Trends

• Memory
• Supply Voltage and Frequency
• Primary Function
• Ecosystem Trends
  • Performance vs Energy Efficiency
  • Single vs Multicore
  • Ecosystem Architecture

Yole Group of Companies Related Reports

How to Use our Data

RISC-V MCUs on the Rise

The emergence of the Risc-V open-source processor core architecture represents a potential inflection point for the Microcontroller ecosystem. Media outlets have speculated widely about what RISC-V could mean to the dominance of ARM in the processor world. The reality is that even with phenomenal growth of RISC-V over the next 5 years, the ecosystem still has a lot of room for both ARM and RISC-V to grow share in the MCU ecosystem.
Some others speculate extreme growth pointing toward the growth of core count. While there is great opportunity for RISC-V in terms of core count in highly multicore custom ASICs and SoCs, multicore solutions for MCUs are somewhat less impactful due to fewer core counts.
The reality is that both ARM and RISC-V are expected to continue taking market share from 4/8/16-bit applications, proprietary solutions, and more mature core IP that have already been declining in share even before the emergence of RISC-V.
RISC-V may slightly impact ARM’s continued share growth, but ARM is unlikely to lose any share to RISC-V directly.
The low hanging fruit for RISC-V is in replacing custom solutions, coprocessing elements, and subsystems, most of which exist in the SoC class of processors and proprietary ASICs. Even in the MCU ecosystem, custom IP, proprietary and 4/8/16-bit are likely more attractive for alternative design solutions developing new open-source RISC-V alternatives than the well-entrenched ARM ecosystem.
The RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA) is open source so there are no royalties paid to RISC-V International, the standards body governing RISC-V, but even in an open-source environment, efficient processor design is a complex task. This model will enable design houses, tools venders and other IP suppliers to provide competing designs based on the common RISC-V ISA (and potentially other IP) creating differing revenue streams.
The revenue opportunity will vary widely as chip designers, application developers and ecosystem partners offer fee-based services to add value in the ecosystem.
With this revenue model, it is clearer to follow the impact by shipments of MCUs. RISC-V’s MCU market share is estimated at almost 4% by 2027 by unit shipments. This opportunity is expected to accelerate growth rapidly in the 5- to 10-year range.
SoCs and Custom Processor solutions will offer greater margins based on their much higher overall chip value and the variety of solutions implemented in both commercial and customized or proprietary processor solutions. These markets are already early adopters with a greater risk-reward ratio for custom solutions as compared to the more mature MCU market.
Despite a comparatively cautious prediction of RISC-V adoption rates, with market penetration growing at nearly 20% CAGR through 2027, compared to other media outlets, we expect RISC-V to provide significant opportunity in the MCU market over the long term.

Abov, Actions, Ambiq Micro, Analog Devices, AppoTech, ARM, CEC Huada Electronic Design Co, Ltd, China Resources Microelectronics (CR Micro), CML Microsystems, Elan Microelectronics, EM Microelectronic, Epson, Espressif, Giantec Semiconductor, GigaDevice, Guoxin Microelectronics (Unigroup), Holtek Semiconductor, Honeywell, Infineon Technologies, Intel (exiting MCU market), IXYS (Littlefuse), Maxim Integrated (acquired by Analog Devices), Microchip Technology, Mikron, Nationz Technologies, Nordic Semiconductor, Nuvoton Technology (includes Panasonic Semiconductor), NXP, Nyquest, ON Semiconductor, On-Bright Electronics, Quicklogic, Renesas Electronics Corporation, RISC-V International, ROHM, Samsung Electronics, Shanghai Belling, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, Silan Microelectronics, Silicon Laboratories Inc, Skyworks Solutions, SONiX, STMicroelectronics, Sunplus IT, Texas Instruments, Ultrasense, Weltrend Semiconductor, Winbond, and more.