My bylined blog post below with John Kibarian of PDF Solutions originally appeared on the SEMI website.
John Kibarian, CEO and founder of PDF Solutions and a member of the ESD Alliance (ESDA) Governing Council, is a keen observer of the semiconductor ecosystem. Since PDF Solutions sits between design and manufacturing, Kibarian shared unique perspectives on both in a recent discussion.Smith: What trends are you seeing in the semiconductor industry. Are there any that surprise you?
Kibarian: We see several trends that have been going on for quite a while.
As much as we hear Moore’s Law is dead, there’s still a strong drive to get to advanced nodes. The benefits are harder to achieve and require more than geometry scaling, but demand for these advanced nodes continues to grow. Another emerging trend is the need for insatiable compute power in data centers to support the explosion in AI applications. In recent history, the mobile phone market has been the key driver of the push to new advanced nodes, but that is changing as the performance needs of data centers and AI applications are now driving the shift.
