AI to Spur Uptick in ASIC Design Starts

Dylan McGrath, EETimes
11/17/2017 00:01 AM EST

SAN FRANCISCO — Design starts for artificial intelligence (AI) voice-activated device ASICs will be increasing at a compound annual rate approaching 20 percent by 2021, nearly twice the 10.1 percent CAGR of all ASIC design starts between 2016 and 2021, according to a new report by Semico Research.

With the surge in popularity of voice-activated digital assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, plus the general frenzy of work being done around AI, both startups and established companies are pushing hard to develop silicon to add voice activated capabilities and other AI features to products, especially in the consumer arena.

According to Rich Wawrzyniak, senior analyst for ASIC/SoC research at Semico, AI in the form of pattern recognition, voice recognition and language translation will find its way into almost every device and application that has a processor, DSP or FPGA and some level of computational resources in coming years.

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