The share of the total IP market taken by interface IP has increased from 18% in 2017 to 28% in 2023, with expectations to grow to 38% by 2029.
The top three protocols driving growth are PCIe, DDR and Ethernet, with respective five-year CAGR of 17%, 17%, and 21%.
Synopsys holds over 55% market share in interface IP, with no significant competitors challenging its position, while other vendors are beginning to explore multi-product strategies.
With AI systems, the various sub-systems need to be interconnected with ever more bandwidth and lower latency, creating the need for advanced protocols like DDR5 or HBM memory controller, PCIe and CXL, 224G SerDes and so on.
IP nest forecasts the total IP market to be worth $15 billion in 2029 and Interface IP $5.4 billion itself.
IPnest has made its five-year forecast (2024-2028) by protocol and computed the CAGR by protocol (picture below). Most of the growth is expected to come from three categories, PCIe, memory controller (DDR) and Ethernet, SerDes & D2D. The value of the Top 5 protocols which was $2200 million in 2014 is expected to be in 2029 will be $4900 million in 2019 – representing a 2024-5 CAGR of 17%.
This forecast is based on the growth of datacentric applications. Looking at TSMC’s revenues split by platform in 2024, HPC is clearly the driver. Starting in 2020, IPnest expects this trend to continue up to 2029, at least.
Synopsys has built a strong position on every protocol -and on every application by doing strategic acquisitions since the early 2000’s and by offering integrated solutions, PHY and Controller. IPnest sees no competitor in a position to challenge Synopsys’ 55% market share. Next two are Cadence and Alphawave, with market share in the 15%.
In 2025 and after, IPnest expects that a major strategy change will happen during the decade. IP vendors focused on high-end IP architecture will try to develop a multi-product strategy and market ASIC, ASSP and chiplet derived from leading IP (PCIe, CXL, memory controller, SerDes…). Some have already started, like Credo, Rambus or Alphawave. Credo and Rambus already see significant revenues results on ASSP, but we will have to wait to 2026, at best, to see measurable results on chiplet.
