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Abstract: For more than four decades the semiconductor business model has been driven by Moore’s Law, namely that, “the number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.” Intel Co-Founder Gordon Moore’s predicted that through an increase transistor density the industry would derive the benefits of increases in functionality and performance, while also decreasing cost. Aggressive adoption of new process nodes has enabled the development of system solutions in silicon that have spawned new industries and applications, and increased productivity in existing ones. It is estimated the semiconductor industry revenue will exceed $300 billion this year.While still technically viable, Moore’s Law is becoming an economic challenge. With each new process node comes a significant increase in design implementation cost. This is exacerbated by the lack of major productivity enhancements from electronic design automation (EDA) tools over the last decade. The increase in chip development cost is impacting semiconductor company business models, and influencing R&D trends.
This talk will discuss the state of the semiconductor industry, the economic challenges of Moore’s Law, and propose some of the business models and semiconductor product types that are likely to thrive in the future.
Biography of the Speaker
John Daane is the President and Chief Executive officer of Altera Corporation, a leader in the programmable logic semiconductor market. Altera designs and markets programmable semiconductor devices and a complete electronic design automation software suite. Mr. Daane joined Altera from LSI Logic Corporation where he spent 15 years, having worked his way from a summer intern in 1985 to executive vice president of the communications product group with responsibility for ASIC technology development and the computer, consumer, and communications divisions. Mr. Daane became President of Altera in November 2000, and led an overhaul of the company including products, organization and personnel that resulted in PLD market share gains in 2002 through 2009. He has a bachelor’s degree from University of California at Berkeley, and has been granted 20 U.S. patents. Since 2003 he has served on the board of directors of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), an industry lobbying organization, and is currently the chairman of the board.