Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Tuesday, March 28, 2006 — Highly
programmable and reprogrammable logical devices cater to a variety of
applications in the passenger car market. The penetration of
programmable logical devices into automotive electronics is a boon for
car owners and proves to be a cost effective solution in the years to
come.

The reason for the high growth and penetration in the automotive
market is due to easy reprogrammability, in the case of programmable
logical devices. The flexible nature of programmable logic devices
have been adopted increasingly in telematics and car infotainment
solutions inside the passenger cars.

World PLD Market in Passenger Car earned revenue of $154.1 million in
2004 and estimates to reach $356.7 million in 2009.

The nonexistence of many pure players in the PLD market space going
into passenger cars makes the scenario attractive. However, it has
been a difficult proposition to enter the ever-attractive PLD market
space. The attractiveness is largely due to the presence of few pure
players in the PLD market space catering to high demand for the
“computer-on-wheels” kind of automobiles.

“There is an absence of NRE costs and minimum order quantities in the
case of PLDs,” says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst C. Vasantha
Lakshmi. “In general, PLDs are cost effective and reusable under
different hardware platforms. The handful of players in the PLD
business has been able to handle the design challenges and software
programming of the programmable logic devices thereby utilizing the
advantages of the logic devices.”

Consumer equipment lifecycles are not the same. The cost is still a
major factor in the automotive environment. The electronics going into
the passenger car space is still very costly and the need for the
industrial grade temperature range puts pressure on the cost of
designing the PLDs, suited to the passenger car environment.

The increasing demands and need for having a comfortable time inside
the car leads to increase in the percentage of logic devices. This
also increases the complexity of the design hence leading to higher
requirements of integration and miniaturization.

“To deal with the challenges like design complexities and to cater to
the needs of the industrial grades of temperature in car, the design
engineers need to be well educated about the requirements in a
passenger car,” says Lakshmi.

World PLD Market in Passenger Car, a part of the 9952 subscription
service, provides an overview and outlook for the market. This study
has been segmented into total PLD market in passenger cars, Total FPGA
market in passenger cars and Total CPLD in passenger cars. This
research includes detailed market opportunities and industry trends
that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market
participants. Interviews are available to the press.