A (Brief) Analysis of Semiconductors: From the Edge to the Cloud
Today we are reaching the limitations of Moore’s Law where semiconductor efficiency is at a point where it can be scaled all the way from the world’s most powerful supercomputer (Fugaku) down to the phenomenal capabilities exhibited in products as diverse as Apple Airpods and autonomous vehicles. To get to this point though, it’s taken an entire ecosystem of innovators both upstream (chip fabs, designers) and downstream (CPS, GPU, SoCs) all the way through to the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). This piece breaks down what is quite a complicated piece of technology into simple explanations so you can understand what semiconductors are, how we’ve arrived here and where we’re going. I’ll conclude with a reasonably thorough overview of key (public) market participants across the ecosystem; with a particular focus on cloud/data centre technologies so you can see where opportunities may lay.
There’s a lot to squeeze into this article. I’m going to start by providing an overview of cloud and edge computing and the companies, at a high level, who provide the infrastructure that ties all of that together (data centres, infrastructure owners and network providers). Then I’ll take a step back and look at the semiconductor landscape that powers everything from the cloud to the edge - looking at little at the history and the progress that…
