Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written By: Ee Huei Sin, SVP and President, Electronic Industrial Solutions Group at Keysight Technologies

Today’s technologies are more complex than ever. They must be developed in less time and with fewer people—all while trying to be first to market. Components once considered simple, such as a cellular power amplifier (PA), are now complex integrated modules with 1,500 different nodes to simulate and test. What is driving this growing product complexity across industries?

Global Digitalisation

Everything is going or has already gone digital. Twenty years ago, the estimated global data storage was just over 50 exabytes. Today, it has increased 140 times to 7,000 exabytes. The world is generating more than 1,000 petabytes—that’s 1 million terabytes—per day. New devices and business models have emerged, providing more business and personal value as big data and new insights improve outcomes across a wide range of use cases. Five years ago, McKinsey estimated that only 40% of businesses were digitised, despite deep penetration into tech, media and retail. Today, business digitisation has increased to 65%. This massive growth in just a few years means we are moving a lot of data around on the network, creating the need for higher throughput with less latency, even with the gains of the cloud.

Computing

The changes are far from over. The use of distributed processing, with apps leaning on massive data centres for heavy processing loads, is transforming how applications work. Technology now supports our just-in-time needs, from instant voice recognition to real-time translation or turn-by-turn directions. As customised chips and compute engines process more data faster, the use cases and value of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to control complex systems also increase.

Addressing Semiconductor Demand  

Demands arising from new technologies like silicon photonics, millimeter-wave (mmWave) and high-power devices have led to new semiconductor manufacturing facilities, or fabs, being planned around the world. This is to build enough capacity for developing these emerging technologies and to address the chip shortage that occurred during the pandemic. As chip supply chain shortages are expected to linger into 2024, manufacturers will continue to struggle with supply chain risks.

“Today’s technologies are more complex than ever. They must be developed in less time and with fewer people—all while trying to be first to market. Components once considered simple, such as a cellular power amplifier (PA), are now complex integrated modules with 1,500 different nodes to simulate and test.”

According to IHS Markit, roughly four in five global semiconductor fabs are located in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China. In the U.S., lawmakers and manufacturers are starting to focus on reshoring semiconductor technology manufacturing to the Americas, as confirmed by the recent passage of the bi-partisan, congressional CHIPS and Science Act. For example, Intel is opening a new fab in Ohio, and Qualcomm and Micron are also investing in additional domestic manufacturing capacity.

Most fabs have historically operated at about 80% utilisation, but supply chain disruptions over the past few years have made supplier pipelines and deliveries less predictable. So, to ensure greater flexibility for manufacturing processes and supply chains, organisations should begin prioritising partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers to gain access to technologies they lack in-house or invest in developing their own custom design and fab capabilities.

Accelerating Innovation  

Solving the challenges for future technology innovations not only requires manufacturing capacity, but also engineering breakthroughs in test and measurement processes. Custom-designed semiconductors can enable these breakthroughs, creating new measurement systems to test use cases that require greater spectrum and bandwidth.

Additionally, building custom chipsets can help relieve supply chain problems. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, some supplier lead times grew to 50 weeks or more. Companies that used their own semiconductor technology were better able to manage product flows and protect shipments from external gridlock.

Staying ahead of today’s technology and supply chain challenges requires strong, collaborative partnerships within the right ecosystem, enabling the advancement of custom semiconductors that will help us all create a more innovative and sustainable future.

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