According to a TrendForce study (via PC Gamer), although the pandemic initially seemed to devastate the IC design industry, the rise in remote working/learning and more people gaming resulted in unprecedented demand.

When it came to the Top 10 IC design companies in 2020, Qualcomm and Broadcom took the first and second slots, respectively, but Nvidia was the leader in terms of year-on-year growth in third place. Last year, Team Green produced $15.4 billion, a huge 52.2 percent improvement over 2019. It should be noted that the acquisition of Mellanox improved the company’s data center products, which produced approximately $6.4 billion in revenue.

AMD, which finished fifth, had a strong year as well. The company’s revenue of $9.7 billion was a 45 percent increase over the previous year. Intel’s market share was further eroded by its 7nm CPUs for both consumer and business use. Chipzilla recently announced plans to open up its existing and expected manufacturing ability to other businesses, including AMD and Nvidia, with the introduction of Intel Foundry Services.

Broadcom was the top dog in 2019, but according to TrendForce, the unexpected demand for network equipment, coupled with Apple’s decision to reintroduce Qualcomm’s baseband processors, helped the Snapdragon manufacturer take the top spot with a revenue of $19.4 billion, up 33.7 percent year on year.

Concerns have been raised about the global chip shortage, which could be aggravated by the current drought in Taiwan, which will soon impose additional water restrictions.