Power Electronics Article: The Semiconductor Industry Is In Transition

Companies are beginning to acknowledge the potential of new markets and downstream revenue opportunities as they explore a more comprehensive “silicon to services” model that spans the data center to the mobile edge. More specifically, with eroding ASPs (average selling prices) and increasingly prohibitive design costs at ever lower nodes, many companies are searching for fresh revenue streams across a wide range of verticals comprising the Internet of Things (IoT).
However, with the IoT install base expected to increase by about 15% to 20% annually through 2020, security is currently perceived as both a major opportunity and a considerable challenge for the semiconductor industry.
Alongside services, open-source hardware offered by organizations and companies such as RISC-V and SiFive have begun to positively disrupt the semiconductor industry by encouraging innovation, reducing development costs and accelerating time-to-market.
The success of open-source software—as opposed to a closed, walled-garden approach—continues to set an important precedent for the semiconductor industry. Faced with prohibitively expensive development costs, a number of companies are opting to avoid unnecessary toll collectors while placing more of an emphasis on open-source architecture as they work to create new service-centric revenue streams.
 
To read more, please visit: https://www.powerelectronics.com/discrete-power-semis/semiconductor-industry-transition.