IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2022 - 113

Scott Hanson, chief technology officer and founder of Ambiq, stated that start-ups are an important
part of the innovation ecosystem, as most large companies (e.g., Google and Tesla) started out as
one. He mentioned that the " outsider's mindset " helps drive innovation and move things forward,
such as Tesla accelerating electric car adoption. Big companies can tackle large, expensive problems,
while start-ups can take risks on solving hard problems that are often seen as too chancy for
established companies. He argued that both are needed to approach different parts of the innovation
puzzle, given their specific risk tolerances and resources.
Scott Hanson
Christal Gordon advises the federal government in the area of microelectronics research funding and
was able to speak to the approach in funding innovation. She discussed how the government has
a long history of supporting large-scale innovations, such as the Internet, and how many agencies
support research, not just the National Science Foundation and DARPA. NASA, the Department of
Energy, and the National Institutes of Health as well as other funding modalities, such as small business
innovation research grants and early career grants, can support researchers throughout their
careers. She highlighted that collaboration is needed to innovate and provided tips for grant writing
to improve chances of success.
Christal Gordon
Thomas Parry, mixed-signal designer, SystematIC Design, discussed how open silicon can improve
innovation. He said that " innovation is stochastic " : unpredictable and requiring experimentation. He
argued that we need to encourage more participants in the process, with a diverse set of approaches.
Open source design principles have accelerated innovation in software by enabling engineers to
build from previous ideas that are now publicly available. This is applicable to hardware, too, when
it comes to open platform development kits, tools, designs/intellectual property, and fabrication
processes. A more open IC design infrastructure would level the playing field and enable access to a
more diverse set of researchers, not just those from elite universities.
Thomas Parry
-Alicia Klinefelter, moderator
A
ISSCC Special Event 6: The Next Trillion-Dollar Market
At the 2022 International Solid-State
Circuits Conference, a panel of worldrenowned
experts gathered to offer
predictions of what the next trilliondollar
market will be. Prof. Vladimir
Stojanovic´, University of California,
Berkeley, started the round of crystal
ball gazing by noting that the United
States alone spent US$1 trillion in 2016
on medical testing and diagnostics.
Leveraging advances in semiconductor
technology, he argued, will make
at-home diagnostics a practical reality
and the next trillion-dollar market.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2022.3168108
Date of current version: 25 June 2022
Dr. Hayato Wakabayashi, Sony
Semiconductor Solutions, noted that
the Internet of Things is rapidly
growing. A major driver of future
growth will be the deployment of
massive numbers of next-generation
smart cameras for the visually rich
world we inhabit. Nancy Shermwell,
chief operating officer, Trilogy
Networks, countered with a market
opportunity that has received insufficient
attention from the electrical
engineering community: agriculture.
Feeding the world's growing population
requires precision at an almost
inconceivable scale to achieve the
necessary efficiencies. Delivering a
digital transformation of agriculture
is a giant challenge and an equally
massive opportunity.
The next three panelists identified
as a common point of departure
the limitations of current
compute fabrics. Dr. Lawrence
Loh, corporate senior vice president,
MediaTek, bravely offered
an extrapolation of historic trends
to predict that the semiconductor
industry would generate US$1 trillion
in revenue around 2030. He
identified as a potential spoiler the
exponential growth in the global
energy consumed for computation.
Reducing energy use by multiple
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE
SPRING 2022
113

IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2022

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