By Rich Goldman, Director Product Marketing, Ansys
Rich Goldman
Taking a moment to look back at 2022 reveals a year full of surprises, a year difficult to predict. 2022 opened as the year of 3D-IC, Bespoke Silicon and AI-enabled IC design and ended as AI astounded us all in the ’person’ of ChatGPT. In between, Intel became a foundry, ARM sued one of their largest customers, and semiconductors went from extreme shortages to glut. (We used to call that boom to bust, or undercapacity to oversupply.) And perhaps most of all, the tragic war in Ukraine affected us all and the global economy in unforeseen ways.
2022 was an unpredictable year. 2023 is setting up to be just as unpredictable, but we can rather confidently project trends from 2022, and make some less likely predictions.
Bespoke silicon will explode in 2023, as the 2022 pioneers press their advantage, and 3D-IC becomes available to more systems companies. The advantages of bespoke silicon as delivered in optimized end systems are becoming clear to everyone, driving the technique toward the mainstream. 3D-IC is the enabler, and as foundries make this technology more widely available, bespoke silicon will become more the norm. Classic semiconductor companies will team with systems companies to develop their own bespoke silicon.
