FEATURED INTERVIEW

Eric Demers, Senior Vice President, Engineering, Qualcomm

Q: From your personal perspective, what do you see as the most important trends shaping the semiconductor industry over the next 5–10 years? And, how do you personally stay informed or adapt to changes in this evolving landscape?

A: With the slowing down of technology nodes improvements, particularly in terms of costs, the emergence of chiplet and multi-die solutions appears to be a technology trend for the semiconductor industry.  Stacks, interposer, die 2 die, multi-node solutions, etc… are all emerging technologies that will be able to help deal with the costs structures in the sub 6nm range.  We’ve seen a few companies do this over the last decade, but now most must.

On top of that, clearly AI is having impacts across the industry.  We see changes in a wide spectrum.  How we interface to personal devices is changing.  What kinds of devices we built are changing.  How we build devices is changing.  It’s hard to estimate where things will end up, but we are in a state of flux, and we must all jump in or be left behind.

Q: With rapid advances in semiconductor technologies and supporting innovations such as AI, 6G, and advanced chip design, how do you personally prioritize staying innovative Which emerging technologies do you find most exciting or potentially transformative for the industry?

A: Innovation has always come to those who dare.  We cannot be afraid of new technology, but must embrace them and look at how they can change the status quo.  Business that will be strong in 10 years likely don’t exist yet; things are changing that fast.  In terms of prioritizing, for me, I always tend to favor the more disruptive and widely affecting technologies.  AI is clearly in that domain, where everything is potentially affected.  How to leverage that?  Well, learning about, feet first.  Same goes for new chip technologies – there’s nothing better than actually building a chip that uses a new technology process or manufacturing method.  Clearly, you have to look at the promise to identify what kind of product to make.  But you can’t wait until everyone has done.  Risk takers are more often than not, rewarded.

Q: The semiconductor industry faces a complex global supply chain and various market challenges. From your experience, how do you think professionals can navigate these risks effectively?

A: This is very tricky.  For fabless semiconductor companies, most end up with supply chain management organizations, whose job it is to understand the options.  It’s key to have multiple critical supply chain elements, if possible.  This allows you to have better pricing and redundancy, in your supply chain.  Obviously, on the process side, working with not only TSMC, but also GF, or SMIC or Samsung or Intel, may allow you to have far better control over your cost structures than just one supplier.  Though NRE-wise, having multiple suppliers is far more expensive.  So this is critical, but also complicated, and so probably unique to each company.  Thus, having an management organization focused on this is important.

Q: Looking back, what was the toughest professional decision you’ve made, and what did you learn from it?

A: Difficult decisions come in many forms.  You may hit a difficult decision related to your own career development or employer.  You can have a difficult decision when looking at reducing work forces. You can have difficult technical decisions. Which is hardest? It’s conditional for each person and situation.  For myself, looking back on things, career decisions have been the hardest.  Mostly because they affect you personally and often extend out to your family.  Given that, you cannot make an objective decision. Switching to my current employer, 14 years ago, was a big deal.  Took weeks and had impacts across my career and personal life.  Both good and bad.  What did I learn? Well, mostly these kinds of decisions are hard, but that you need to trust your heart as well as your mind.  You can’t make decisions without both having mental and emotional belief in them.  Often, you must trust your instincts, as your subconscious can often make more complex decisions than your active mind can.  Also, it’s generally easier to have emotional belief in a decision that comes from instinct. So, trust yourself.

Q: What advice would you give to individuals, startups, or entrepreneurs entering the semiconductor industry today?

A: In terms of advice for entering the field, clearly knowledge of that field is important, but so is passion. To succeed and overcome the obstacles you encounter, you need the drive and passion to get through.

Q: How do you personally see semiconductor technologies and innovations like AI shaping society in the coming years?

A: In terms of shaping society, it’s a bit of a gamble.  Honestly, technologists often love the technology and the idea of creating something new.  But often, it’s very hard to anticipate the impacts.  Looking back on smartphones, while the promise of accessing pictures and the internet were big, nobody understood the impacts that it would have on society.  It created the realities of social media, and really changed how our youths interact with each other.  Obviously, some of it is not good, while some of it is amazing.  Other more recent technologies driven by AI, such as self driving vehicles, smart-everything devices, etc… all have the potential to have even greater impacts.  Often, little is done but promises of a few key benefits.  But there’s the potential for negative impacts on some forms of employment, schooling disciplines and careers, manufacturing and industrial development, environmental impacts, etc… It’s hard to anticipate those, and often technologist would rather only look at the positives. But I’ll honestly say that I worry about it but can’t yet anticipate what those will be. But they will be significant.