By, Lucio Lanza Managing Partner, Lanza techVentures

Seismic Change for the Semiconductor Industry in 2023

Lucio Lanza

The computer era is coming to a close after 40 years of productivity and efficiency improvements that forever changed our lives. The emerging computerized society will have an even more profound and transformative effect than the Industrial Revolution, starting with the way we communicate with each other. Physical proximity is no longer a consideration as the digital world intersects the physical world, fashioning a digital society that will expand our boundaries and curiosity in ways we haven’t begun to imagine.

As Moore’s Law slow down, the need for a variety of innovative solutions has never been greater.

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By Sanjay Bali, VP of Strategy and Product Management, Synopsys EDA Group

Sanjay Bali

2022 was a big year for the electronics industry. From the continued growth of AI (both in end devices and in chip design itself) to the emergence of more ways to design in the cloud, the level of innovation we saw was impressive. And it was necessary, as we experienced how complex semiconductors have become, with engineers striving to meet the progressively challenging task of optimizing power, performance, and area (PPA) in chips with as many as trillions of transistors.
In addition to systemic and scale complexity, a variety of other challenges were laid bare last year, from cyclical swings in product demand to a shrinking pool of engineering talent to the growing impact of all this energy consumption on our planet. Given this backdrop, what might 2023 bring to this increasingly vital industry?

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By Sandeep Srinivasan, CEO, VerifAI Inc

Sandeep Srinivasan

A wise person once said, “make predictions at your peril.”

Ignoring this wise advice, here are some AI Chip Companies and EDA predictions.

2022 for AI-Chip Companies

2022 has been a tremendous year for some AI Chip companies. Firstly due to the staggering amounts of capital, these companies have been able to raise. Secondly, many companies are now demonstrating their products and use cases.

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By Jean-Marie Brunet, Vice President and General Manager, Siemens

Jean-Marie Brunet

Rapid adoption and revenue growth in the hardware-assisted verification market segment was especially apparent in 2022 as verification and validation costs soared, a result of IC/SoC complexity. Justification for hardware-assisted verification tools was not questioned.

Moving into 2023, everything indicates a continued trend. The year bodes well as hardware-assisted verification solutions become more fully integrated into verification and validation environments while serving two distinct parallel tracks. One track is hardware and the other is software.

The hardware track plays to hardware designers who want hardware-assisted verification solutions to address three significant challenges. The first being hardware emulation for compilation and debug of large, 12-billion gate or more designs.

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2023: An Initial Rough Ride with A Long-term Vision of Smooth Sailing

By Michel Villemain, Executive Chairman, Presto Engineering

Michel Villemain

After a bumpy 2020-22 cycle due to unforeseen issues such as COVID and geopolitical uncertainty, we are entering into a period of supply chain normalization in 2023. However, I anticipate that semiconductor pricing will remain volatile due to geopolitical (China/Russia) and macroeconomics (inflation/energy) reasons. As a result, and in common with most industry experts, I anticipate a semiconductor contraction in 2023, driven by consumer demand decrease (especially PCs) after the COVID bubble.

On the bright side, the markets that Presto Engineering serves are expected to be relatively immune from this downturn. These sectors, including medical, industrial, automotive, communications, will continue to invest in innovation and growth.

The medical industry is a very exciting area of growth for us, as COVID has been both a game changer and an eye opener, prompting the need for remote diagnostic and point-of-care-products. However, virtual point of care is not realistic if one needs to use a power outlet – so we are very focused on power efficiency, enabling battery-operated, portable/mobile devices. For example, in 2022, we developed our first IVD ASIC platform solution for infectious disease to materialize our customer’s vision of lab-in-the-palm smartphone.

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By Tony Pialis, CEO and cofounder, Alphawave Semi

Tony Pialis

The AI computing war will reach a fever pitch

The race for evermore powerful AI supercomputers will shift into high gear and the industry will see more records being broken and set in 2023. Microsoft and Nvidia just announced plans to build a new Azure-hosted AI supercomputer, Nvidia and IBM releases more powerful chips, and newcomers such as Cerebras raised $720M in funding along with unveiling a 13.5M core AI supercomputer. This AI supercomputer arms race shows no sign of stopping as ML training becomes more complex. One emerging challenge, however, is being able to feed data fast enough with higher bandwidth and low latency to operate AI workloads to their full potential. This will drive the development of more highly customized and optimized silicon solutions with faster chip-to-chip connectivity links in the most advanced process nodes designed in leading-edge foundries like TSMC. The rate of development for connectivity solutions to keep pace with AI computing will be faster and more essential than ever in the next year.

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