Semiconductors will be the new oil, claims Qualcomm

“Semiconductors are what is going to be needed to run largely any and everything that we do in this world on a going forward basis,” said the Qualcomm exec.

“Making sure some of these semiconductor solutions are able to scale across diversified needs in a way that can be cost amortised and cost effective for consumer usage is going to be extremely valuable. Also, given we are in a cloud economy, having these solutions interact and interface and be managed through cloud applications is going to be key. These are some of the primary challenges that the solution provider has to address looking to the future.”

To illustrate the issue, Patel points to the changes that will take place within the home. “This market sector is going to evolve into a massive compute network environment which ultimately will embrace a significant proportion of IoT technologies as well. And this is where a lot of compute edge sensing, machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities will become embedded within the home in the near future. This is key to a total solution that a company like Qualcomm provides for the home.”

While Patel maintains that the semiconductor industry is well positioned to meet these requirements today, he warns that a greater supply of silicon will be called for. “The semiconductor industry is expected to double in the next three-to-five years, and so keeping up with that growth, keeping up with the best-in-class semiconductor solutions for some of the diversified needs is going to be extremely valuable, and investments from not only silicon vendors but support from various governments around the world is going to be very valuable for the semiconductor industry.”