By Koen Verhaege, CEO, Sofics

Koen Verhaege

Navigating Challenges and Embracing Opportunities in 2024

The challenging year 2023 is finally wrapping up… Predictions were that it would be a transition year towards a better 2024. So, let’s welcome 2024!

First, let’s look back. 2022 was notable, albeit for the wrong reasons: warehouses were being filled to brace against new shortages. In 2023, these overstocks created a steep drop in production. Consider the foundry capacity utilization numbers: they are near 80% today, compared to being at all-time highs, above 100%, last year.

The key factors shaping 2024 will likely be geopolitics and the subsequent influx of tax dollars, as well as, the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence in our workplaces.

Geopolitics

Geopolitical tensions will be fought and lost through the use of dollar monsoons – not by war. All (wannabe) powers are releasing tsunamis of dollars (euros, won, yen…) to bring semiconductor production “home”. Politicians are sharpening their scissors to cut ribbons at new manufacturing plants. Many if not all of these plans will fail, at least they will fail to create autonomy or independence.
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By Coby Hanoch, CEO, Weebit Nano

Semiconductors in 2024: Predictions from an Emerging Memory Perspective

Coby Hanoch

In semiconductors, 2023 was a mixed bag, with some applications like automotive and industrial growing, while overall the industry contracted. Looking ahead, analysts agree that we will see significant growth in 2024 as the industry recovers. The SIA forecasts a 13.1% increase in sales in 2024, and IDC is even more bullish, forecasting 20.2% revenue growth for the semiconductor industry in 2024.

At Weebit, a leading provider of ReRAM, the non-volatile memory (NVM) technology that is set to replace flash memory in the coming years, this growth is a positive sign, since nearly every electronic device needs NVM. Here I will outline some of the industry dynamics in 2024 that could driver further growth.

AI will get even edgier.

We can all agree that 2023 was the year of AI, and 2024 will be even more so. AI technologies are proliferating in every industry, with solutions in the cloud and increasingly at the edge where devices require local brains with power-efficient solutions. In 2024, we will see an increasing number of edge AI designs, particularly TinyML, moving to monolithic integration in 28nm and 22nm. Integrating memory on-chip in an advanced process node can save cost and power, and enhance security. This is important as AI/ML models continue to increase in size and sophistication.

Since embedded flash memory can’t scale below 28nm, what’s needed for these integrated devices is a different embedded NVM that can do the same level of inference as SRAM or DRAM but at extremely low power and cost. This is where ReRAM comes in – used not only for code storage, but also to store the synaptic weights needed for artificial neural network (NN) calculations. As much of the power consumption needed for NNs is related to data movement between a system’s computing elements and memory modules, integrating dense, low-power NVM like ReRAM closer to the computing elements can minimize power and latency. In 2024, we will see more designs moving in this direction.

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By Mark Himelstein , CTO, RISC-V International

Mark Himelstein

What are the top five trends for the RISC-V open standard ISA in 2024?

This year has been a great one for the RISC-V ecosystem. Our global community of more than 4,100 members from 70 countries across the globe helped to support the continued growth and adoption of the open standard RISC-V ISA. There are now more than 13 billion – yes that’s billion with a B – cores on the market. And we’re not stopping! RISC-V International now hosts more than 75 technical working groups driving progress and advancement on RISC-V standards, software development and tools. We also ratified 16 specifications including the ratification of RISC-V Profiles specification version 1.0 with RVA20, RVI20, and RVA22, RISC-V Cryptography Extensions Volume II and the RISC-V IOMMU Architecture Specification.

We also hosted three anchor events in 2023—RISC-V Summit North America, RISC-V Summit Europe, and RISC-V Summit China. At each event, RISC-V enthusiasts, supporters, adopters, designers, and more joined to address the latest in all things RISC-V. We had a record number of attendees at each event, culminating with more than 2,000 registrants at RISC-V Summit China. Our biggest event yet!

But we are not done. The industry can expect so much more from the RISC-V community in 2024, with key technology advancements, new member products and innovations, and more.

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By Richard Preston, Hardware Lead, CacheQ Systems

Richard Preston

Technical Innovations, AI integration News and Unanticipated Market Trends in 2024

If 2024 is anything like 2023, it will be full of technical innovations, more news on AI advancements and up-trends in the semiconductor market.

Under the technological innovation category, the semiconductor industry will see more specialized hardware chips for specific workloads such as Large Language Models (LLMs) inferencing, speech processing, image and pattern recognition, and the continued pursuit of autonomous driving and smarter robotics. We will see an increased need for custom compilers to enable software development for these specialized chips. CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs will continue to serve specific markets, but pioneers will create custom ASICs to differentiate or improve product performance.

Conjecture about AI integration and semiconductor design will continue far into 2024. We can expect more software developers will use AI-generated code in their final products. The potential is also there for AI to auto-generate and self-deploy code for the most agile and responsive applications. The day when AI is permitted to go beyond informing a human, and control operations without human intervention is getting closer. Until then, there are many industries where AI can be an invaluable companion. Some industry experts allude to a day when AI can be an effective doctor, having been trained on a vast amount of information on known medical conditions, symptoms, and treatments. Perhaps 2024 will be the year medical professionals adopt greater use of AI as a companion tool.

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By Dr. Ashish Darbari, Founder and CEO, Axiomise

Dr. Ashish Darbari

RISC-V, Chiplets, Formal Verification Adoption in 2024

2024 will offer up a cornucopia technological innovation, AI integration and perhaps unexpected market trends.

It’s hard to argue with the success and adoption of the RISC-V ISA. In 2024, open-source RISC-V implementations for high-performance compute will continue to take wings with interconnect-based SoCs for AI accelerations. Commercial verification tools will begin to emerge in 2024 to support the RISC-V hardware development ecosystems. It will be followed by a robust verification design flow that will quickly become an industry standard.

The semiconductor industry will also see increased adoption of chiplet for AI-based hardware. As the industry moves on to 5nm or less nodes, chiplet would be a key. A chiplet market trend could be the emergence of chiplet suppliers whose only product is a chiplet-based design.

Automotive functional safety though mostly dominated by Arm architecture so far would see new RISC-V players building processors and chipsets that would offer new features while ensuring compliance with ISO26262.

Security continues to be a challenge for hardware design, and here AI will play an interesting role in learning from threat patterns, and we believe adversarial AI would stand out.

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By Aleksandr Timofeev,   founder and CEO of POLYN Technology

Aleksandr Timofeev

The trend of integration and deployment of edge processors in IoT, wearables, and consumer electronics applications will accelerate this year. Edge processors based on standard digital architecture such as ARM or RISC-V will be replaced by more energy-efficient specialized edge chips. The expansion of edge chips based on in-memory computing will also accelerate as the advantage of analog edge chips over digital edge chips becomes more apparent thanks to greater energy efficiency, higher performance, and lower price.

A companion trend for 2024 will be the creation of new hybrid digital-to-analog systems and the first attempts to integrate memristors as elements of edge chips.

Watch for proofs of concept targeting integration of ultra-low-power analog processors for sensor data extraction with low power digital MCUs to perform classification. The digital twin role in this integration enables refining the extraction details prior to chip production. These proofs of concept will demonstrate maximum efficiency of the analog chip structure for MAC operations both in power and latency.

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By Michal Siwinski, CMO, Arteris

Emerging Trends and Future Directions in the 2024 Technology Landscape

Michal Siwinski

As 2024 unfolds, a technological revolution is unfolding. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), automotive, compute architecture and industrial electronics are reshaping our world. These evolving trends are pivotal in steering us toward a future with unparalleled opportunities.

The Rise of AI and NLP

The acceleration of AI, particularly at the intersection of Deep Learning (subset of Machine Learning) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) where there is a lot of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) progress, is evident in the rapid progression from ChatGPT 3.5 to GPT-4 with the expected release of GPT-5 by early 2025. This advancement is paralleled by the remarkable engagement with ChatGPT. The current user base has expanded to over 180 million, marking an 80% increase in just eight months. This represents one of the fastest broad adoption rates of a consumer application.  Generative AI and LLMs have finally transcended academic realms, increasingly emerging as practical tools that are reshaping industries and demonstrating significant potential for innovation, whether directly or indirectly experienced by users of end applications.

 Source: Arteris, Inc

AI’s impact extends to training and inference in enterprise computing and data centers. Companies like Tenstorrent are at the forefront, harnessing AI for innovative compute solutions. The deployment of trained models for inference is crucial in applications ranging from automotive advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) to industrial robotics, disrupting traditional markets and introducing new paradigms in how we approach technology. This rapid technology development across multiple platforms signifies the transformative era of AI.

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By Zeev Collin, CEO, Semitech Semiconductor

Zeev Collin

Navigating the Tech Terrain: Trends and Transformations in 2024 and Beyond

Amidst the semiconductor industry’s ongoing recovery from the aftermath of Covid-19 and the surging demand from the automotive sector, the technology landscape in 2024 finds itself significantly influenced by recent geopolitics and the waning era of globalization’s golden age. The focus now extends beyond merely what technology accomplishes to where it originates. The growing divergence between China, the U.S., and to a lesser extent, Europe, presents fresh hurdles in terms of market accessibility and technology availability. However, notwithstanding these challenges, it also offers new prospects, particularly for regional startups that stand a better chance of capturing regional markets and gaining access to products that were previously out of reach. Both Chinese and U.S.-based chip companies exhibit resilience, evident in the projected 16.8% sales revenue increase for 2024 following a 10.9% decline in 2023 (as reported by research firm Gartner), with AI and automotive sectors being the primary catalysts for this revenue growth.

The recent geopolitical climate has led to the introduction of the CHIPS Act, aimed at re-establishing semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. While substantial impacts from major companies will likely take years, if not decades, smaller firms and startups in 2024 are already making early strides by investing in their own “micro-fab,” focused on the more esoteric technologies like photonics and MEMS.

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By Sowmyan Rajagopalan, CEO, Thalia

The economic outlook for the semiconductor industry in 2024

Sowmyan Rajagopalan

As 2024 unfolds, the semiconductor industry is entering a period of reinvigoration and transformation. The advancements on the horizon are not just iterative; they are foundational, signaling a new chapter of innovation and strategic market adaptation.

Process technologies down to 2nm

The industry’s march towards 2nm process technologies heralds an era that will challenge and evolve Moore’s Law. The significance of 3D stacking and monolithic 3D integration, as recently highlighted by Penn State research[1] and Intel’s roadmap to a 1-trillion transistor chip[2], indicates a shift towards more sophisticated and capable semiconductor devices. These are the very advancements that will define the next generation of electronic devices.

Automotive industry requirements move on

Amidst this backdrop of innovation, the automotive sector’s move to electric and green hydrogen solutions marks a change in demand for semiconductor technologies, particularly in the area of battery technology. With the projected increase in the semiconductor content of vehicles, there is an evident need for technologies and devices that can meet these emerging requirements, such as discrete compound semiconductors (silicon carbide and gallium nitride)[3], and offer superior performance and efficiency compared with traditional silicon.

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By Cédric Mayor, CEO, Presto Engineering

2024: Sailing the Semiconductor Ocean – After Turbulent Storms, Keeping Innovation as a Compass

Cédric Mayor

2023 will remain in everyone’s mind as the inevitable return to the basic balance between demand and supply. Our semiconductor industry entered 2023 after a traumatic supply shortage, quite unique in our industry’s recent history. With great determination, Presto Engineering confirmed its 2023 strategic choices and closed again a new record year.

While consumer-driven segments such as smartphones, computers and others had to weather the storm, Presto Engineering’s key market focus on the automotive, medical, industrial, and communication infrastructures has been rewarding. These segments demonstrated strong resilience due to their somewhat counter cyclic product life cycle and lack of inventory in 2022; most importantly, their never-ending semiconductor bill of materials was driven by heavy trends of automation, smart monitoring, and sensing.

Like many peers, I anticipate that demand will be back in 2024, especially once inventories in all segments return to normality after the first half of the year. Fundamentals like electrification, smart mobility, 5G maturity, and artificial intelligence (AI) will create demand for new ASIC and semiconductor devices. However, if global inflation is assumed to slow down this year, along with demand back again, I dare think that a talent shortage and energy price volatility will be rationales that will sustain sales price levels. The cost-per-transistor is not scaling down until it reaches below 20nm nodes, as we are now in a new era of reduced wafer price erosion along with different dynamics from node-to-node. While demand returns back full steam ahead in mature nodes, I expect that the global 8-inch wafer capacity footprint in China and trade restrictions will still impact prices significantly.

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