The future of semiconductors is constantly evolving, and current trends herald higher levels of innovation and competition. Rising demand, geopolitical conflicts, factory closures, and inflation have led to semiconductor shortages and production declines until 2023. Subsequently, the 2022 semiconductor industry confidence index released by KPMG and the Global Semiconductor Alliance dropped to 56/100, a drop of 18 percentage points from the previous year's record high level.
However, this volatility is short-term. Not only are we seeing an end to the chip shortage, but more than a quarter of the executives surveyed by KPMG expect an imminent chip supply glut. Increased production means businesses will need to adapt to new technologies and processes.
This article explores the future of semiconductors, including trends, which industries will be most impacted, and how your business can succeed.
What does the future hold for the semiconductor industry?
Many semiconductor companies have expanded their market share by integrating multiple functions into a single chip, which until recently was the case. The idea is that a chip needs to be designed once and used in a variety of different situations.
Chiplet-Based Design
IP reuse remains a focus for the future of the semiconductor industry—most industry leaders cited it as a top focus in the 2023 Perforce State of Semiconductor Survey—but now designs have shifted to customization to achieve market growth. The future of semiconductor design is not about designing a single monolithic chip, but relying on chiplets. These are specialized modular chips that can be combined together to create complex system-on-chips (SoCs).
These chiplet-based designs are made up of smaller, customizable building blocks. This approach could lead to lighter hardware, lower costs for consumers, and improved sustainability. Some IP vendors are connecting chiplets with the idea of "soft cores of IP," IP that enterprises configure based on their specific needs. MIT Technology Review also identifies this shift, also known as "multi-chip system technology," as the future of the semiconductor industry. While chiplet-based designs are growing in popularity, it will likely be another five years or so before they are widespread enough to even become an industry standard.
globalization
In addition to future shifts in semiconductor design, the industry will become more global. When KPMG asked semiconductor executives whether their companies planned to expand global hiring and work with multiple distributed teams across multiple companies, 71% responded in the affirmative.
Is the semiconductor industry growing?
The semiconductor industry is growing rapidly. With the emergence of products such as self-driving cars and the emergence of products incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning, the need for semiconductors has become more urgent.
McKinsey & Company predicts that semiconductors will become a multi-trillion dollar industry by 2030.
Although semiconductor industry revenue is expected to decline slightly this year, the market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 18% through 2024.
Major future trends in the semiconductor industry
There are several trends that are reshaping the future of semiconductors, including new technologies and market expansion, as well as novel uses of existing technologies, such as the use of chiplet 2.5D packaging on mature process nodes.
Take advantage of new technologies
The three key technology trends driving the future of the semiconductor industry today are:
-
Open source hardware is disrupting markets and changing the way companies think about design;
-
IoT increases demand for cost-effective semiconductors;
-
5G increases the demand for high-performance computing equipment.
Broaden the market
The range of applications for semiconductors has expanded significantly. From smartphones to self-driving car sensors, semiconductors power everything today. MIT Technology Review 2023 survey results indicate that customers expect and demand more personalization. Enterprises are responding to this demand, too, with more than half of executives surveyed saying they plan to expand their business's range of "smart" products.
The rise of new vertically integrated systems companies
Vertically integrated systems companies will also drive demand for semiconductor design, as non-traditional semiconductor companies are producing their own equipment and platforms to support their ecosystems.
Take Apple for example, they released a new M1 processor in 2022. Apple's independent research and development and ownership of this patent represent a strong trend in the future of semiconductors: more companies enter the market and competition becomes increasingly fierce.
So why are other systems companies following Apple's lead?
“Apple is designing more of its own chips to better control the performance of its devices and differentiate them from rivals. (Bloomberg)
Through vertical integration, these companies are able to benefit from traceability. If you don’t have a traceability platform, you’ll inevitably run into challenges. However, if you have an IP management system with traceability (such as Methodics IPLM), you will know what you have and where it is. This helps accelerate innovation and improve performance.
Key challenges for the future of the semiconductor industry
Currently, the biggest challenges facing the semiconductor industry are time to market and cost. Labor and talent shortages have also become an important issue recently.
time to market
Time to market is a major concern in semiconductor design. Perforce's annual State of Semiconductor Survey found that shortening time to market is the primary goal of most semiconductor company executives. When semiconductors don't come to market at the designated time (which happens in about half of production cases), revenue drops significantly.
cost
Manufacturing semiconductors is expensive. Some experts pointed out that this is the reason why the industry has been monopolized by a few companies. Redesigns are particularly costly, so companies must ensure that semiconductors function properly before they are manufactured and produced.
Talent shortage
As the work environment changes, including the shift to remote work and more global team structures, companies are increasingly competing for talent. Research by Deloitte found that by 2030, semiconductor companies will need more than one million employees to fill new positions. While the causes of this problem are complex, businesses may find that streamlining workflows, improving collaboration, and adopting new productivity tools can help alleviate worker dissatisfaction.
What causes these challenges?
There are many root causes of semiconductor challenges:
-
Enterprise engineering environments cannot keep up with design complexity
-
Companies report minimal component reuse
-
Acquisitions may create design silos
-
Design data sizes are growing rapidly, causing performance degradation
-
Manufacturer's lack of traceability from requirements to design to validation, leading to redesign
-
Insufficient communication when needs change
-
Failure to meet key requirements of the overall design when reusing existing IP
These challenges are significant, however, you can overcome them using a traceability platform such as Methodics IPLM.
Better prepare for the future of the semiconductor industry with Methodics IPLM
Here's how to overcome semiconductor design challenges using MethodicsIPLM.
1. Achieve full traceability
Without traceability, you won't be able to track important metadata and which IPs were used where.
Using a platform like MethodicsIPLM, you can track what has been built, what resources are available, and what parts are reusable. By gaining traceability from requirements to design to verification, you can avoid redesigns and improve communication of requirements changes.
2. Realize IP reuse
Due to the complexity of semiconductor designs, managing versions and their dependencies during the design phase is challenging. This can result in missed time to market.
MethodicsIPLM provides a solution to easily identify and reuse IP. This means that once you design your IP, you can reuse it. This speeds up time to market and significantly reduces costs.
3. Maintain a single source of trusted data
As you acquire other companies or expand your design team, maintaining a single source of truth becomes ever more important.
Perforce Helix Core can store and version control all design files (including hardware, firmware and software) in a single repository, supporting file-level security access control. It integrates seamlessly with Methodics IPLM, and by using them together, you can unite all design data and metadata across your company's design silos, improving communication between design teams.
4. Improve collaboration and even security
In the semiconductor world, collaboration is becoming increasingly important. Design teams are spread across the globe, adding to the complexity of chip design collaboration. Due to strict export regulations, you need to have stronger IP security.
By combining Perforce Helix Core with Methodics IPLM, global design teams can increase collaboration without sacrificing IP security.
Semiconductor solutions for the future
Perforce Helix Core empowers silicon teams around the world by supporting the storage, access and management of design assets for analog, digital, infrastructure and software development. Designed for large-scale teams and complex projects, it is a single source of truth.
Methodics IPLM is the ideal platform for designing the future of semiconductors. Whether your business is a semiconductor manufacturer or an electronics company just getting into chip design, Methodics IPLM is the right solution for you.
Perforce Helix Core is tightly integrated with Methodics IPLM, giving teams a comprehensive view of the status and usage of IP, covering the entire process from IP entering the system to delivering the SoC.
Article source: https://bit.ly/47Spvuh