EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2024 – Celera

By Pat Brockett, CEO, Celera Inc

Pat Brockett

Time for the Innovation Floodgates to Finally Open

Product innovation has accelerated over the past decade. Thanks to the widespread deployment if AI, there is now intelligence in just about every product we touch. These changes have improved our lives and saved some in the process. The trend seems to be unstoppable. But there is another side of what is happening all around us. It has to do with what is creating innovation, and what is enabling that innovation.

For many decades the chip industry led the way for innovation. A new processor from Intel or new cell phone platform from Qualcomm would define new markets and spur innovation. Over the past decade or so that’s changed. Now, software leads the way for innovation. New business models, new user experiences and all that intelligence we see in everything is defined by software.

But that’s only half the story. All that sophisticated, complex software requires massive processing power, sensing technology and high-speed communications to come to life. This is delivered by the chip industry. Without optimized and customized semiconductor technology, software innovation cannot be deployed commercially.

So, the chip industry is as important as ever to drive innovation. In fact, the growing need for custom, purpose-built semiconductor systems is very good for business. There is a roadblock to growth, however.

These custom semiconductor systems contain both digital and analog functions. The ubiquitous use of sensors in almost everything and the need to network it all together are actually driving up the analog content of these systems. So, what’s the problem?  Simply put, it’s the analog design bottleneck.

Digital chip design has enjoyed vast improvements in automation and productivity over the past 20 years or so. In contrast, analog chip design is done today about the same way it was done 20 years ago. It’s a manual, labor-intensive process that relies on the expertise of a shrinking number of analog design experts. It is the long pole in every system design project, and it’s definitely slowing the speed of innovation.

The good news is that help is on the way. Our company, Celera is working with a constellation of world-class supply chain partners to finally solve the analog design bottleneck and bring 21^st century automation to a 20^th century process. I can’t wait to see what our customers will deliver once the speed of analog and digital chip design achieves parity. It will be quite exciting.

Category: Predictions

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2024 at 8:33 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.