Design & Reuse

Industry Expert Blogs

Will more ASIC design companies cooperate with Apple and Google?

-
March 20, 2014

It’s no secret that Google, Amazon and Apple are heavily involved in the semiconductor industry. Apple itself is the biggest buyer of chips and estimated to buy 10% of chips sold worldwide. Google uses Intel’s CPUs in their server farms and represent alone 4% of Intel total sales.

Both Apple and Google have decided separately to establish in-house ASIC design and production activities by hiring ASIC development engineers as well as acquiring several fabless companies.

Can it be that we are on the verge of a new and exciting era, where the largest companies in the world have discovered that off-the-shelf ICs are not sufficient for a sustainable competitive advantage, and custom-made ASICs are required?