EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2023 – Codasip

By Rupert Baines, CMO, Codasip:

Rupert Baines

The ‘immutable’ laws are broken. 2023 offers a new era of custom compute. That or ruin.

After a few years of ‘catch up’, the world’s largest economies were left reeling from the pandemic impacts of 2020-22. The global economy overall is not in the greatest shape with geopolitics stifling national economies and throttling global trade routes. This is on top of the normal boom and bust cycle. The impact is inevitably felt in the semiconductor industry which had to manage an initial panic over supplies, before consumer demand scaled back and left many with excess inventories. Having said that, for the last two years, the industry has still seen growth. The industry forecasts for this year are not so bright, however.

But in spite of questions over industry forecasts for 2023, there are big opportunities for companies with strong foundations, and clear strategic direction that focus on helping their customers differentiate themselves. Some of this is, quite literally, about being in the right place at the right time.

In terms of location, we are finding it definitely pays to be European at the moment. The geopolitical environment on the back of the pandemic obviously is taking its toll on the global economy. We think it’s a carpe diem moment for European leaders, such as ourselves. Trading between the US and China has become particularly tricky. Having a ‘neutral’ position means we are able to continue collaborating with our customers and our partners, no matter where they are.  Although the geopolitical situation has created a desire to put national interests and developments over global market needs, the fact everyone knows is the world market and global opportunities still offer the greatest prize.

So, in this current geopolitical climate, nations or regions are protecting their IP and more emphasis is being placed on local, national or regional developments. The EU ChipsAct is designed to ‘bolster the resilience’ of the European semiconductor industry. Words like ‘sovereignty’ applied to semiconductors suddenly bring a new strategic importance to electronics. The importance of semiconductors and wider awareness of their role (or even, simply, what they are!) is apparent in how the industry is increasingly going to be funded – by not only VCs, but also by governments and regional development organizations.

The economic and geopolitical situations don’t change the fact that the industry has, for decades, danced to the tune of the so-called immutable laws of semiconductor technomics: Moore, Dennard and Amdahl. With the end in sight for the limits of these laws there are obvious challenges but also new business models and technological opportunities.

In particular, open standards like RISC-V are changing the industry’s design options and, combined with a domain specific processing, enable innovation to take new and more dynamic directions. In this new world of custom compute, the adherence to old business models becomes counterproductive in my opinion.

But 2023 won’t be an easy ride for the industry, so smart companies are hiring teams experienced in the right applications and areas of technology that help customers commercialize their innovations. These customer-centric companies, helping customers design for differentiation, will prosper and will kickstart sea changes in the way the industry views traditional architectures and IP licensing. These changes will be a springboard for sustainable, medium to long-term growth across the industry – for the parts of the industry willing to adopt change.

Our CEO regularly paraphrases Darwin’s sentiments on change: ‘The survivors are not the fastest or the strongest but those who are most open to change. Those who cannot change will become extinct’

Category: EDA Predictions

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2023 at 11:18 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.