A chip way to cope with COVID-19

Reflecting on the current COVID-19 situation, and the widespread fear and panic it has caused to the entire world, I’d like to share my thoughts on the COVID-19 situation and how this very much relates to the semiconductor industry. While the spotlight and words of encouragement have been on healthcare workers, this is also an opportune time to salute those who have contributed to semiconductors - and hopefully correct some perspectives by the public towards our industry, which, in my view, has been maligned for long periods of time, particularly in Singapore.

We often hear knee-jerk reaction news reports about how the semiconductor industry in Singapore is retrenching employees, and how it is losing its lustre versus other more illustrious technology sectors – e.g. software engineering, Fintech & the IoT. In light of the current measures taken to prevent widespread transmission of COVID-19, the majority of the general public still fail to recognize how advances in technology, driven through the semiconductor industry, has radically changed the way we work and live.

The advent of high speed Internet and mobile networks (4G and beyond), have allowed us to access data and information from the comfort of our homes, at speeds that was never at all possible during the SARS epidemic. This efficiency of accessing data has transformed the way we work, allowing us to work through our laptops and mobile phones, without the need to be physically present in offices. This means that today, many corporations have been able to seamlessly adopt business continuity practices such as telecommuting, effectively minimizing face-to-face interactions, which are one of the avenues for the spread of the virus.

Similarly, these advances in technology have also allowed us to experience multi-user videoconferencing with audiences from around the world. Today, we are able to present our PowerPoint slides and play-back our high definition videos in its full grandiose to viewers who might be 12 time zones away, without even a single glitch! Even places of worships, one of the hardest hit institutions due to the virus, have turned to technology to broadcast their weekly services, as their own means of ensuring “business continuity”, for those in the church communities.

The above changes are what I would term “the quantum leap of the way we work and live”, and are driven primarily by advancement in our semiconductor technology. While software and applications development have taken the spotlight in recent years for producing multi-billion dollar unicorns and a multitude of successful start-ups, these applications are by and large a user interface to engage users. These software and applications still ride on the underlying semiconductor technology, which enable them to clock higher speeds, produce higher quality graphics, and communicate data at higher speeds. All these would not have been possible without the advancement our semiconductor technology, which had been driven through extensive R&D and large sunk investments over the past 60 years, since John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invented the first transistors in 1947 at Bell Labs.

Little did many know, that many of these core, cutting-edge technologies are actually designed, developed or manufactured in Singapore. Here, I’d like to take the chance to highlight and pay tribute to some of these semiconductor technologies that can be truly and surely stamped with a “made in Singapore” seal:

1. Advanced packaging, enabling the integration of multiple discrete integrated circuits into a single package, helping communication signals to propagate at faster processing speeds, and at much more favorable costs. This technology has been adopted widely on mobile phones, laptops and networking servers used in data centres and clouds. Some of the leading development work done here include research institutes like IME, who have their own 300mm advanced packaging line. Meanwhile, manufacturers of these advanced packaging include large multinationals like UMC, UTAC and JCET.

2. Integrated circuit design of high speed SerDes, hardware security and thermal cooling, as well as manufacturing of silicon photonics, allowing our precious data to be securely stored / retrieved quickly and reliably off the Cloud, without the need to worry about losing the data. Once again, local institutes like IME conduct design and development of secure chip memory and thermal management for data centres, while companies like AMF oversee manufacturing for silicon photonics applications, and Broadcom oversees design of high speed SerDes.  

3. MmWave technologies (using high gain power amplifiers, design of CMOS circuitry etc.) to allow 4G (and soon 5G) transmission of information from any physical location in the world, capable of transmitting data and video at speeds otherwise not possible with 3G. Examples of some local champions include design houses arQana, system and module integrator Amplus, and research institutes like IME.

4. Power efficiency on power management systems (using silicon carbide as the base material etc.) to allow our mobile applications and data centers to enable better power conversion efficiency, which is important due to the increasing overall global demands on power consumption. In this domain, we have work being done by research institutes like IME and ERI@N, as well as universities like NUS/NTU. Manufacturing of power products are done in foundries such as GlobalFoundries, and integrated device manufacturers such as STMicroelectronics.

Think - all these would not have been possible during the SARS epidemic in 2003, without the advancement of semiconductor technology in the above domains. Today, we are seeing a seismic change in the way we work indirectly through semiconductor advancement. Perhaps this is why all the semiconductor stocks are all doing so well in the US because there is a recognition from certain quarters of the importance of the industry to technology. Let’s also not forget that the on-going trade wars between the US and China is also centered around dominance in key areas of semiconductor technology.

So, the next time you meet someone who says he is telecommuting or using videoconferencing for his work, share with this person some perspectives on how semiconductors have helped enable the transformation of the way we work. More importantly, it is essentially a chip way to cope with COVID-19.