Gartner: FPGA/PLD market to grow 14 percent in '06

SAN FRANCISCO — The market for FPGAs and other programmable logic devices (PLD) is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2005 to $6.7 billion in 2010, according to Bryan Lewis, a vice president and chief analyst of ASIC, SoC and FPGA research at market analyst firm Gartner Dataquest.

Lewis forecasts that the FPGA/PLD will grow 14 percent this year to reach $3.7 billion and another 18 percent to reach $4.3 billion in 2007.

"The FPGA market is well positioned to out grow the semiconductor market in 2006 and beyond," Lewis said.

Gartner reportedly bumped its 2006 forecast for overall semiconductor growth to 10.6 percent from 9.5 percent earlier this month, citing stronger-than-expected demand for PCs.

The FPGA/PLD market is dominated by the top two players, Xilinx Inc. and Altera Corp., which between them accounted for more than 84 percent of the market in 2005, according to Gartner.

"Low-cost FPGAs such as Spartan from Xilinx and Cyclone from Altera will be key drivers as these products open up new markets for FPGAs, including consumer and automotive," Lewis said. "FPGAs are not only going after the ASIC market but they are moving into traditional DSP and micro controller markets as well."

Gartner's numbers contrast dramatically with those of In-Stat, a competitor that earlier this week published a forecast calling for the FPGA market to grow from $1.9 billion in 2005 to $2.75 billion in 2010. In-Stat's forecast covers only FPGAs, while the Garter forecast includes simple programmable logic devices (SPLDs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs). But FPGAs make up about two thirds of the market, according to Lewis.

"FPGAs have had the fastest growth for the last five years and that will continue for the foreseeable future," Lewis said.

A number of industry insiders told EE Times this week that the In-Stat numbers seemed low. Reached for comment earlier this week, Jerry Worchel, the In-Stat senior analyst who created the forecast, said he stands by the numbers.