The UK is home to 32% of Europe’s independent chipless, fables and IC design houses and the numbers are rising , according to a new report from Future Horizons.

The number of these start-ups in 2006 increased by almost 4% over the previous year, although it was a smaller increase than in 2005. The UK has three times as many companies as other European regions, with the exception of Israel, said the European Fabless Semiconductor Report.

“The UK position is no surprise and Israel has always been a source of new company generation, but Germany and France, despite their size, lag behind the leading two by some margin,” said Chris Ryan, semiconductor industry Analyst, Future Horizons.

“The smaller Greece and Switzerland has seen the largest percentage new design company growth in recent times,” said Ryan.

The report covers independent IC design companies in Western Europe and Israel and analyses in terms of company IC design skills and IP sorted into various technology groups. These include analogue, RF, CPU, automotive, encryption, sensor interface radio baseband and verification.