By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Using AI as a tool is an idea broadly embraced in the semiconductor industry. But putting AI into practice needs validated data easily shared within the flow of design, testing and manufacturing. Stakes are high for an industry that must now forced to handle data coming from many sources in different forms.

The semiconductor industry’s quest for consistent data is foremost in discussions at the Semicon West and Design Automation Conference this week in San Francisco.

By Adele Hars

What’s at stake:
Quantum computing is a hot field. All the major industry players worldwide are working on it, with hefty help from governments and investors. Expectations are running high. At stake is who will hold the key to the new technology that could touch everything from pharmaceuticals to cybersecurity, AI, finance, healthcare, logistics and more.

France is a hotbed of quantum startups. At the end of 2022, CEA-Leti, the giant French microelectronics lab in Grenoble, added to the pack by spinning off its quantum hardware division. To head up the new company, called Siquance, CEA-Leti named Maud Vinet as CEO and Co-Founder. No surprise, perhaps, as Vinet had spent the last five years heading up Leti’s quantum hardware division.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
In an AI market totally dominated by Nvidia, breaking the GPU giant’s logjam is, at minimum, a challenge for anyone, even a legendary CPU architect. However, Jim Keller’s secret weapon is not his reputation. It’s his belief that open-source policies accelerate innovation.

Jim Keller is a legendary CPU architect, his name linked to a host of commercially successful processors. Over three decades in several organizations, Keller, as a hands-on engineer, worked with or led teams who have developed architecture ranging from Alpha at Digital Equipment Corporation, K8, K12 and Zen at AMD, Apple’s A4, A5 and other apps processors, to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Computer chip at Tesla.

Keller resembles a talented actor with a nose for great scripts and starring in a string of award-winning movies. However, it remains to be seen whether Tenstorrent, an AI hardware startup where Keller graduated from early investor to CEO today, will be the winner in the evolving AI race.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake?
Although actual chiplet-implemented automotive semiconductor devices aren’t here yet, automakers are busily imagining what chiplets can bring to their future. Is the chiplet mania wishful thinking, or will it finally open the future for flexible, scalable and differentiated automotive semiconductors that carmakers have always wanted?

Responding to a strong pull from the industry, Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC), an international R&D organization backed by strong corporate partnerships, is kicking off the first world-wide automotive-focused chiplet event in Leuven, Belgium on June 20^th. It will bring together representatives from more than 25 companies, including tier ones, tier twos, OEMs and tool vendors, Also invited are outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies, and foundries.

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake: 
For more than a decade, the automotive industry has known the day is imminent for an inevitable change in its in-vehicle network backbone from Controller Area Network (CAN) to Ethernet. Now, more than ever, carmakers know they must cross the chasm. Marvell is showing how.   

Car companies must sink or swim in a tempest turbulent with big changes in the technologies they use and the business models they pursue.

By Bolaji Ojo

12 years ago, Nvidia Corp. placed a huge wager on artificial intelligence (AI). Payday came recently in the form of a historic valuation on Wall Street.

But the company had barely a week to celebrate its new status as the world’s most valuable semiconductor company before it became clear it will have its hands full defending its position in the AI market.