New leaders can capture the chiplet revolution

TechInsights, USA, organized a fireside chat today on the global semiconductor industry.

G. Dan Hutcheson, Vice Chair, TechInsights, said, the Chinese economy has been starting to recover now. We are also getting into a new PC up-cycle. Companies are also trying to move their centers of excellence to the other countries. We are seeing a normal upside right now. You do get some variation in supply over the period of 12 months. We are also moving into the 2nm era next year.

The magnificent seven for everybody includes: Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla, etc. Microsoft and Apple came out of the PC era. Amazon and Google came out in the 2000s. Nvidia came out of semiconductors. Tesla happened later. Apple is still riding on the smartphone. We also have the growing EV market. AI has also been emerging strong. However, AI stocks were worst performing among semiconductors stocks last week.

Nvidia has done a double lock-up recently. It has GPUs and whole system. They are re-architecting the way the data center works. Nvidia is, where it is today. We now need a new technology to be the next big thing. When Apple iPhone first came in, it started a new revolution. It always surprises you!

We will have new leaders in future. We will also see new leaders capturing the growing chiplet revolution. The foundries that exist would not have been possible without the EDA revolution. Chiplets have now emerged as the new revolution.

We have neural network processors already. We also have cellphone APUs. There are some really cool things coming that will help organizing your life, especially using the smartphone.

AI is seeing huge explosion in entrepreneurial pursuit. Several AI chip startups will be coming up. GPUs always had an innate advantage. GPUs chips were power hungry. We now need to partition that down to smaller parts. PCs had closed architecture partnership between Intel and Microsoft. We later saw the explosion of innovation around apps. AI is more of a curiosity right now. IBM used it to help physicians diagnose cancer. Today, it has become routine. AI solutions will take step forward, and bring real value.

China needs to catch up
As for domestic Chinese companies in AI, China is developing its own core technology. Taiwan has been incredibly successful as it has access to the global technologies. China also needs to do lot of classical innovation to get forward. Doing a lot of innovation can be very cultural. Silicon Valley is one example to follow. We are hoping that China can catch up, and get back to the order, and we can get back the global order.

AI will be used on chips to improve MCU/MPU performance. Synopsys is a world leader that enables all of that. We are also seeing new process technologies being developed. However, we still need the human intelligence to make all of this happen. AI, as a tool for engineers, may make them struggle. People were locked into their tools earlier. You have to be really good at using all the weapons at your disposal. If you don’t, you can be left behind. We are also going to go through another productivity surge in future

Regarding alternatives to silicon, he said that God was bullish on silicon. It has proved to be the best material. Today, we have substrates with specific functions. We have to get around the interconnect level. Data centers are migrating further down to the new chips. Quantum does replace it! However, it will co-exist with silicon.

Lead times are delivered largely by the complexity of the problem addressed. Today, we have about 2,000 process steps, but the lead time is still 12-13 weeks. We have to address complexity. We had the case of just-in-time. We may create disaster if we moved to just-in-case. Shrinking lead times requires you to decrease utilization. We saw lead times decrease to 60 percent, using utilization. Intel had increased utilization by increasing hot spots.

We also need to look at the supply chain. As we become more efficient, we may also be dealing with even more complexity. We cannot see that either happen, or decrease, in the forseeable future. Regarding NAND demand, we are witnessing the incoming demand, at least from data centers.

Japan getting back mojo!
Finally, which country can emerge as a semiconductor powerhouse? Japan is finally getting over lost decades. Japan is coming back certainly. It appears that Japan has got back its mojo after a long time. China is also going to grow. India has an advantage of cheap labor force. India may have difficulty in duplicating the success of software. It has advantages and disadvantages.

Japan and South Korea are much ahead right now. The US recovery is also taking place. Mexico is starting to rise. That’s driving new factories inside Mexico. Canada has a liberal immigration policy. Some of the best and brightest are present there. There is always opportunity. With technology, you need to run faster, work smarter, etc.

He hoped that everyone is safe in Taiwan, following the earthquake. Despite the severity of the tremors, the impact on Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity appears to be limited. TSMC has done, and been doing incredible work in the future.