The unprecedented scale of IC industry in 2015 "the whole and crazy", the semiconductor industry in several major acquisition to happen again this year, almost every month on the market have announced acquisition of information. Why this trend? One explanation is that the industry have mature, the enterprise needs a bigger size to the price competitive world with greater advantage.

Let's examine the incorporate several piles, stand up to see if the above explanation, and the m&a cases for semiconductor IP supplier make any sense.

IC industry mergers mean for semiconductor IP supplier?

In may this year, Broadcom acquired Israel MagnaCom IP suppliers, the company has patented the ModulaTIon technology of WAve ModulaTIon (WAM), so-called alternative quadrature amplitude ModulaTIon (QAM) technology. According to news reports, WAM for Broadcom bring competitiveness in 5 g communications in emerging markets.

PriceWaterhouseCooper a titled "change in technology trading areas: Semiconductor Industry components trading trends (Evolving landscape of technology deals: Semiconductor Industry Device deal trends)," the report pointed out that Avago to buy Broadcom's reason, is to get the new market/customer, and make up the lack of in terms of technology and product portfolio; Broadcom acquisition of MagnaCom obviously is a continuation of this trend.

Other semiconductor merger is also follow the same reason: in May this year, same MaxLinear assets acquired Microsemi wireless access department, is expected to let the former roughly $500 million in 2015, a wireless base station transceiver market more competitive advantage; In April, Qorvo acquired iot solutions suppliers GreenPeak Technologies, in order to obtain the networking family with iot market with highly integrated RF solutions as well as the ability of SoC.

In April, same GigOpTIx Magnum Semiconductor for private enterprises, the latter for professional video broadcasting and Internet provide IC/SoC, software and IP camera market. And in June, Rambus announced interested Semtech $32.5 million deal to buy Snowbush IP department assets, to strengthen its SerDes business and accelerate product positioning; In addition the company also announced to Inphi acquisition Memory interconnection (Memory Interconnect) business.

Another industry Silvaco acquired IPextreme in June, the former is a EDA and design services suppliers, its business model is to assist the large semiconductor manufacturers to enter the international market, with small and medium-sized IP developers make monetizing IP assets; With other acquisitions, in order to strengthen the product lineup, to expand the market territory, Silvace target is to have strong IP team, which is fixed the revenue generaTIng assets (non - revenue generaTIng asset) is converted into revenue.

To provide the IP to market need to cost, and the cost was once the customer get authorization and began to be incorporated into the SoC, recurrent expenditure in order to provide support for the IP. RTL design into SoC, encountered the challenge of complex than put encapsulated IC in PCB design for several times, so IP if the supplier can't provide perfect support and design services, it is hard to expand the scale of its licensing business.

These days, a typical SoC design contains a number of IP function block, may be obtained from multiple suppliers the authorization of function module, integration and validation is a challenge; Integration of a number of IP function block of time system (subsystem) IP platform become necessary, can greatly simplify the SoC integration ─ ─ the embedded RTL IP system IP platform, for example, the FPGA hardware, based on the ARM processor components drive (Device driver) software and so on.

Back to the theme of "the whole and crazy", the author believes that the industry trends in the development of specific application platform especially advantageous IP suppliers; These IP vendors will soon become the future target of the semiconductor manufacturers, because fewer and fewer small semiconductor companies in the market. IC industry consolidation trend will spread to semiconductor IP vendors, more than 2016 deals have been revealed by this trend.