Driven by industry innovation, global semiconductor revenue should continue to grow at an annual rate of between 5 and 6 percent in the next one to two decades, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) said in Taipei yesterday.
That means the industry would continue to outpace forecast annual global GDP growth of 2.5 to 3 percent over the next 10 to 20 years, he said.
“The world semiconductor industry’s growth will be 200 to 300 basis points faster than the world GDP growth,” Chang said in a speech, entitled “A look at semiconductor companies’ rise and fall through innovations in the semiconductor industry,” at the SEMICON Taiwan Future Starts Here show, celebrating the invention of integrated circuits by Jack Kilby 60 years ago.
Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok, Bloomberg
Over the past 60 years, 10 major innovations have fueled the industry’s growth and benefited semiconductor companies that invested heavily in innovations, including Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co, Chang said.
Intel invented and invested significantly in microprocessors during the 1970s, while Samsung became an important “riser” after pouring plenty of resources into developing memory chips during the 1980s, he said.
TSMC was also one of the “risers” in the semiconductor industry over the past 30 years, aided by Chang’s development of the dedicated foundry business model in 1985 and the chipmaker’s heavy capital investments.
Photo: Billy H.C. Kwok, Bloomberg
Chang ranked his business model 10th on his list of 10 major innovations, which includes Moore’s law in 1965 and the invention of memory chips in 1966.
Heavy subsidies by governments, such as China and the United Arab Emirate, could be a kind of business model innovation, while artificial intelligence and machine learning chips are among innovations that are still evolving, Chang said.
As they are still evolving, it has yet to be determined which party would benefit from their progress, he added.
There “will continue to be risers and decliners in the industry. There is plenty room for more innovations,” Chang said.
In his speech in the afternoon, TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音), Chang’s successor, said that innovations in the semiconductor industry are gathering pace.
It took 30 years for desktop computers to become mobile devices, but it only took 10 years to upgrade feature phones to smartphones, Liu said.
Moreover, it took only two years for autonomous cars to make the transition from desert roads to urban use, he said.
However, before self-driving cars can become a part of daily life, they would need to have 100 times more computing power than what the industry has to offer now, as well as the commercialization of 5G technology, Liu said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy