EDACafe Industry Predictions for 2024 – Lanza

By Dr. Lucio Lanza, Managing Director, Lanza tech Ventures

2024 Ushers in the Democratization of Silicon

Dr. Lucio Lanza

The democratization of silicon will become a reality in 2024 as the pieces for its success fall into place. Availability of open-source resources such as the RISC-V ISA and an open-source community-based platform where free design tools and the methodology for a complete design flow are making silicon design more cost effective and readily accessible. And within reach to thousands and thousands of hardware designers or would be hardware designers, helping address the demand for new designs and the acute engineering shortage.

Design guides, how-to webinars and other support resources are also freely available to help train new recruits into the world of semiconductor design. The cost of prototyping in reasonably advanced silicon nodes will be cut down by a factor of 100. Being at a node that is not the absolute most advanced is not a big weakness any longer. And availability of U.S.-based fabs like GlobalFoundries and Skywater Technologies with viable process technologies offering the manufacturing of silicon far less expensive than the traditional silicon design and manufacturing route.

This will be true democratization and we will witness it in 2024.

The open-source movement gained momentum in 2022 as semiconductor companies and tool providers unveiled chips and products to support the RISC-V ISA, helping realize the democratization of chip design and grow the industry. It’s now a widely accepted practice and all design specs making use of open-source resources highlight the brilliance of this dynamic. A hardware designer or engineering group can work at a high-level of abstraction without the need to dip too far into the technical details. They won’t need to design the entire silicon device either. Instead, a set of FPGA devices will be inserted to make the silicon more flexible and adaptable to requirement changes and variations.

Fundamental to the addition of FPGAs will be the ability to add the all-important security checks into the device and that should be available in 2024. Another benefit of FPGAs will give the silicon a longer shelf life since they are programmable and offer a means to stretch the silicon in a variety of different ways. An added top layer of security software will offer greater flexibility and provide a strong shield.
Security solutions have to be dynamic to respond to the evolution of the attacks and we’ll see the first signs of such solutions in 2024.

In many ways, this dynamic is another angle on the More than Moore paradigm with exponential consequences of the flattening of the technology and expanding the number of applications faster than most advanced processes can. The dynamic will fully emerge in 2024 to enable a hardware designer to tailor a silicon design and makes democratization of silicon possible with all the tools and support they need.

About Lucio Lanza
Lucio Lanza is the Managing Director of Lanza techVentures, an early-stage venture capital and investment firm founded in 2001, and the 2014 recipient of the Phil Kaufman Award for Distinguished Contributions to Electronic System Design. Dr. Lanza holds a doctorate in electronic engineering from Politecnico in Milan, Italy.

Category: Predictions

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024 at 1:45 pm. 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.