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.
