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March 20, 2023

Keynotes on Critical Chip Industry Trends and Market Forecasts Highlight SEMICON Korea 2023

Korea’s position among the top three destinations for semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending set the stage for SEMICON Korea 2023, though another factor also made it a big draw as 450 exhibitors and 60,000 attendees flocked to the event at COEX in Seoul: It was SEMICON Korea’s return to a full on exhibition and conference for the first time since before the pandemic outbreak in 2020.

The region’s premier microelectronics, SEMICON Korea 2023 showcased the latest developments in high-priority areas including sustainability, smart manufacturing, advanced chip technologies, and workforce development. Keynotes by semiconductor leaders AMD, imec and Lam Research on critical chip industry trends, along with semiconductor market outlooks, highlighted the event. Following are key takeaways from those presentations.

AMD Keynote – Beating Moore’s Law in an Interconnected World

The advent of PCs and web browsers in the 1980s and 1990s created a new, more connected and information-rich world, while the arrival of smartphones in the early 2000s revolutionized the way people interact, said Joseph Macri, Senior Vice President, Corporate Fellow and CTO of Client, Compute and Graphics at AMD.

And when High-performance Computing (HPC) hit the scene to increase the number of connected devices, the era of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) was born. Yet the two technologies underscored the challenge of chip scaling. The reason: the slowing ability of analog, memory, and logic semiconductors to keep pace with the rising technical complexity of chips, Macri noted.
 

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Joseph Macri, Senior Vice President, Corporate Fellow and CTO of Client, Compute and Graphics, AMD
 

FinFet and gate-all-around promised to address scaling issues though the technologies are nearing their limits to do so. Then came extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, a technology that can reduce chip production costs and process complexity while increasing yield by up to 3%, Macri said.

Ultimately, the chip industry turned to foundries and equipment companies to deliver scaling technologies, Macri said. Meanwhile, AMD addressed the scaling and performance challenge for more advanced chips through architectural changes to produce its heterogenous computing and modular fabric, which will enable the company to lead in the field of compute through 2.5D and 3D packaging.

The heterogenous computing and modular fabric will optimize the performance and energy efficiency of CPUs, GPUs, AI engines, video encoder and decoders, displays, audio co-processors, ISP camera processors, network and DPU processors, and security processors. With system-on-chip (SoC) architecture and hybrid bonding key to fulfilling the potential of heterogeneous integration, AMD is on track to seize the lead in heterogeneous compute. By developing novel solutions to performance challenges, AMD will be in a position to lead the exascale era, Macri said.

imec Keynote – 3D Integration Technology: Enabling Heterogeneous System Scaling

CMOS devices have steadily shrunk in size the past few decades, mainly driven by developments in advanced lithography, a trend that continues today. Even though a number of innovations in materials and device structures emerged to maintain or improve device performance, it has become increasingly difficult to continue reducing transistor size while maintaining performance, said Eric Beyne, Senior Fellow and Vice President of R&D at imec.

SoCs emerged as a potential driver of higher chip performance, though SoC manufacturing complexity and power consumption have limited its scalability, fueling the rise of 2.5 and 3D chiplets and 3D SoCs as potent solutions to the performance challenge, Beyne said. SoC repartitioning and connecting 3D stacks using on-chip networks, along with AMD’s use of a die-to-wafer stacked L3 SRAM cache, are also helping to drive higher performance.
 

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Eric Beyne, Senior Fellow and Vice President of R&D, imec


For their part, 3D NAND manufacturers have added partitioning of the logic and memory stack in separate wafers to their product roadmaps. And the BSPDN (Back Side Power Delivery Network) – connecting power and ground directly at standard-cell level from the wafer backside – that imec proposed a few years ago has become part of the roadmap for most advanced CMOS node fabs, Byrne said.

Lam Research Keynote – Accelerating innovation – From Lab to Fab

Maintaining the rapid pace of semiconductor innovation is becoming more challenging due to rising chip complexity and wafer costs, said Patrick Lord, Executive Vice President of the Customer Support Business Group and Global Operations at Lam Research. To help overcome these headwinds to innovation, Lam Research is working to accelerate the development of advanced technologies at a sustainable cost. That speed needs to pervade the value chain – from lab to fab.

Toward that end, Lam Research last year opened its Korea Technology Center, the company’s most advanced R&D center outside the United States. Located in the heart of Korea’s K-semiconductor belt, the center will help speed the development of next-generation technologies through advanced R&D capabilities, closer proximity to customers, and access to best-in-class talent. 
 

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Patrick Lord, Executive Vice President of the Customer Support Business Group and Global Operations, Lam Research

 

SEMI Market Outlook – Fab Investments, Equipment and Materials Forecast

Market analyst Inna Skvortsova at SEMI said at the press conference that data and chips are the new oil of economies around world. And while she highlighted predictions that the semiconductor industry will reach $1 trillion by 2030, macroeconomic and geopolitical issues remain headwinds to growth. The average forecast this year by major semiconductor market research firms is for a 7% decline in sales to $550 billion.

Yet semiconductor investment worldwide remains robust. During the boom between 2018 and 2020, 64 new semiconductor fabs started construction, Skvortsova said. But from 2021 to 2024, 84 more fabs are expected to start construction.

ImageIn the semiconductor equipment sector, the outlook is for a 16% decrease to $91.2 billion this year compared to $108.5 billion last year, Skvortsova said. Next year the sector is expected to grow by 17.5% to $107.5 billion, rising to 2022 levels, a trend also underway with wafer fab materials. That market reached a new high of $44 billion in 2022 but is forecast to drop 6% this year to $41.2 billion before rebounding 7% in 2024 to $43.9 billion.

Jan Vardaman, President of TechSearch, who presented at the Market Trend Forum, citing IDC, noted that smartphone shipments declined in 2022 but are expected to recover in 2023. IDC research showed PC growth in 2020 and 2021 and a decline in 2022. Vardaman said that the slowdown in 5G infrastructure installation due to heavy capital and operating expenditures is also contributing to slowing semiconductor industry growth.

Vardaman said rising adoption of heterogeneous integration and chiplets will spur the growth of new package types such as Silicon Interposers, Fan-Out on Substrate, Embedded bridge, RDL Interposer, and 3D stacking and in turn accelerate high performance computing deployments, She added that that the trend will open new business opportunities while presenting new technology challenges for the substrate market.

Supplier Search and Workforce Development Programs

In SEMICON Korea’s iconic Supplier Search Program, now in its 12th year, GlobalFoundries, Kioxia and Micron held nearly 100 meetings with equipment, materials and parts companies. The program provides key connections for suppliers across the domestic semiconductor supply chain to expand their businesses overseas.

The workforce development and diversity, equity and inclusion sessions drew about 1,000 young workers to provide insights into career development in the industry as the semiconductor industry continues work to build its talent pipeline. In the Meet the Experts!, a mentoring program for university students, nine engineers from leading global semiconductor equipment and materials companies discussed the progression of their careers and offered advice on university courses for aspiring industry workers to complete.

ImageThe widespread interest in working in Korea’s chip industry makes the program a big draw for students. Only minutes after the doors of the conference room where the program was held opened, it was full.

In the Women-in-Technology program, five female semiconductor industry leaders offered perspectives on how to enhance the diversity of the industry’s workforce. The session targeted not only women but also colleagues and managers of women engineers to help expand awareness of the need for greater diversity.

With the long-term outlook for the semiconductor remaining bright, SEMI Korea looks forward to hosting industry leaders and bringing together players from across the semiconductor supply chain at SEMICON Korea 2024 – Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at COEX in Seoul – to help drive innovation and overcome some of the world’s greatest challenges.