Bulk of MCU revenue moving to 16-bit and 32-bit
30 November 2005
News
The bulk of revenue in the microcontroller market is moving from 8-bit microcontrollers to the higher 16-bit and 32-bit bit devices. By the end of 2009, the combined revenue from 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers will reach approximately twice the revenue expected from 8-bit MCUs. This is according to a new report from high-tech market research firm In-Stat.
Says In-Stat analyst Max Baron: "The shift in revenue is primarily due to the appearance of products providing sophisticated features that must employ higher performance and wider-datapath cores. Properly designed, higher bit-width microcontrollers will require less power consumed per workload executed than their counterparts in the 8-bit category."
Although the bulk of unit and revenue upsides for microcontrollers will result from increased demand for higher performance devices, In-Stat reckons that 8-bit microcontrollers will continue to lead in unit shipments over the combined group of 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers.
The firm says that unit demand in the 16-bit MCU category is dominated by three applications: smartcards, PC peripherals and hard disk drives. Together, these three applications comprise over 40% of total units shipments. The greatest CAGRs come from control and instrumentation, MP3 players and digital camera applications. Unit volumes in the 32-bit MCU space are also dominated by smartcards it says, however, unit CAGR growth is coming from different applications such as digital wireless, PC DVDs, barcode readers, and security.
For information about the report: 'War of the Worlds: 16- and 32-Bit MCUs Invade ASIC Applications', contact Tina Sheltra, [email protected]
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