Will Software Development Cause Another "Industrial" Revolution?

By _Cadence Blog

November 22, 2011

As you have read here before, Cadence has been working closely with Xilinx to create an extensible virtual prototype for the Zynq extensible platform. I have previously written about the need and value for extending virtual platforms at the transaction level. According to the Xilinx Zynq website the main application domains for Zynq are "Intelligent Video," "Comms," "Control" and "Bridging." A couple of these sub-application domains are directly targeted to the world of "Industrial Automation." Given that we in EDA are often fascinated by tablets and phones to motivate the value of our products, I had to learn about the industrial domain a little bit more.

From a pure numbers perspective, according to dataBeans numbers from July 2011, the industrial segment accounts in 2011 for about $530 billion in end products, which is about one quarter of the $2.1 trillion electronics pie (only wired and wireless communications together are bigger). The associated semiconductor content accounts for about $37 billion, which is less than 12% of the overall semiconductor pie. Within the segment dataBeans counts "Test & Measurement" (17%), "Process Control" (20%), "Mil/Aero" (10%), "Medical" (11%) and "Other" (41%).

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