The semiconductor industry may think things are bad, but
it’s wrong. That was the message at Future Horizons’
annual International Electronics Forum in Malta this week.
“The perception of the industry is that the market’s
very bad,” said Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons,
“but the underlying facts are still extremely strong. Q1 was
stronger than most people expected, and that will be the pattern
for the rest of the year.”
The firm predicted 15 per cent growth for this year at the end
of last year, when every other analyst was predicting a flat year.
Now the other analysts are shifting their forecasts north.
“The PC market is going gangbusters and it’s still
the biggest market for ICs. There are fab shortages at Intel, they
can’t make enough chipsets and in the consumer space, the new
products are really catchy,” added Penn.
The big questions facing the industry are how to reduce design
costs and address shrinking market windows. The CEOs of the top
three firms of the automated design industry, Cadence, Synopsys and
Mentor, were on hand in Malta with their various solutions to the
problem.
“Think systemic,” advised Aart de Geus, CEO of
Synopsys, by which he meant dealing with the various problems as an
interdependent whole, rather than as separate issues.
“Virtual re-aggregation,” preached Mike Fister, CEO
of Cadence, stating that the constituent elements of the industry -
foundries, IP companies, EDA firms, EMS services, systems
companies, semiconductor manufacturers and packaging firms - have
to get together if the problems are to be solved.
“It’s the system, my friend,” stated Fram
Akiki, director of IBM’s system and technology group,
promoting a collaborative industry model involving “freedom
from proprietary lock-in”.
However, no one came up with the ultimate solution to the
industry’s problems, the ePSOC, the electrically programmable
system-on-chip which could be programmed at the algorithmic level
and freely re-used. There was one delegate at the conference who is
working on it - Jon Howes, CEO of the Edinburgh-based company
Akya.