Chip War without Soldiers?

Every country realizes the importance of producing skilled chip designers who could decide their success as soldiers by creating advanced AI chips for winning the Chip War. Also, every country is now gearing up to build a good semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem to balance the global semiconductor supply chain that could overcome any more supply chain disruptions experienced during the pandemic. But?the advanced foundries without next-gen chip designers would be the same as ‘Fabs without Chips’. So, in this article, I want to inspire the electrical and electronics engineers who can lead the semiconductor industry as the next generation of chip designers, sharing my insights and explaining how ‘Semiconductor rules the world’. Also, I hope this article inspires the VLSI Design companies to upskill and support their chip design workforce for their long-term VLSI career development, prioritizing and investing in their Learning and Development initiatives.

1. Chip War

The geopolitical AI cold war between the US and China is perceived as Chip War. Artificial Intelligence technology is one of the essential technologies for any country to emerge as the most powerful country with its next generation of defense and space technologies. Chip war is all about fighting for their dominance in AI.

The AI systems can be trained on vast data centers built with cutting-edge AI chips. So, every country is funding and collaborating with global chip manufacturing companies to build advanced fabs for their future.

The advancement and implementation of AI technology rely on semiconductors, and it demands semiconductor architectural improvements.?The improvements in chip design for AI will be less about improving overall performance and more about speeding the movement of data in and out of memory with increased power and more efficient memory systems.

Only with higher technology nodes we can fabricate complex SoCs as cutting-edge AI chips that integrate complex neural engines and memories using new technologies like Chiplets. So, every country is gearing up with advanced fabs.

2. Chip Industry

Our journey in the semiconductor industry started with making IC with four transistors, and it’s continuing to produce complex SoCs with 100s of billions of transistors.

2.1 History:

Defense has been a key driver for the evolution of the semiconductor industry. Defense departments & institutes, especially DARPA in the US, funded inventing chip technologies and introduced the concept of using chips to create advanced defense technologies like next-gen missile guiding systems.

The first monolithic IC was invented by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. In 1960 first operational IC was created at Fairchild. Later the chip manufacturing ecosystem was built with a supply chain[Machines and materials] spread across Taiwan, Netherlands, South Korea, Japan, and other countries, beyond the US. The chip industry emerged from Texas, Silicon Valley, and expanded into other countries like Taiwan, as a global industry. Today more than 90% of the advanced chips are manufactured in Taiwan, mainly by top foundries like TSMC. Chris Miller’s book ‘Chip War’ can walk you through the incredible journey and evolution of the chip industry.

2.2 Semiconductor Ecosystem:

The global semiconductor industry is generating yearly revenue of 500+ billion USDs and growing exponentially towards generating 1 trillion USD by 2030. In my view, it reflects the evolution of VLSI technology. In terms of technology, we are making SoCs with 100+ billion transistors and evolving towards making chips with 1 trillion transistors by 2030.

2.3 Inventions and Innovations:

The semiconductor ecosystem incorporates players like OEMs, IDMs, Fabless-IP, EDA, and Foundries. The ecosystem is evolving with all the inventions and innovations by its players/stakeholders. Every stakeholder contributes equally to the growth of the global semiconductor industry and some of the highlights I am listing here for your reference, continue reading....