REPORT

TOPIC:

INTRODUCTION TO AI FOR
SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is :

intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed

to natural intelligence displayed
by animals including humans.
OR
study of "intelligent agents": any system that perceives its
environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of
achieving its goals.

Reasoning, problem solving

Knowledge representation

Planning

Learning

Natural language processing

Perception

Motion and manipulation

Social intelligence

General intelligence
Search and optimization

Logic

Probabilistic methods for uncertain reasoning

Classifiers and statistical learning methods

Artificial neural networks

Deep learning

Specialized languages and hardware

AI is relevant to any intellectual task.Modern artificial intelligence

techniques are pervasive and are too numerous to list
here. Frequently, when a technique reaches mainstream use, it is
no longer considered artificial intelligence; this phenomenon is
described as the AI effect.
In the 2010s, AI applications were at the heart of the most
commercially successful areas of computing, and have become a
ubiquitous feature of daily life. AI is used in search engines (such
as Google Search), targeting online
advertisements, recommendation systems (offered
by Netflix, YouTube or Amazon), driving traffic targeted
advertising (AdSense, Facebook), virtual assistants (such
as Siri or Alexa),autonomous vehicles (including drones and self-
driving cars), automatic language translation (Microsoft
Translator, Google Translate), facial recognition (Apple's Face
ID or Microsoft's DeepFace), image labeling (used
by Facebook, Apple's iPhoto and TikTok) and spam filtering.
There are also thousands of successful AI applications used to
solve problems for specific industries or institutions. A few
examples are: energy storage, deepfakes, medical diagnosis,
military logistics, or supply chain management.
Game playing has been a test of AI's strength since the
1950s. Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system
to beat a reigning chess champion, Garry Kasparov, on 11 May
1997.In 2011, in a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition
match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the
two greatest Jeopardy! champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings,
by a significant margin. In March 2016, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5
games of Go in a match with Go champion Lee Sedol, becoming
the first computer Go-playing system to beat a professional Go
player without handicaps. Other programs handle imperfect-
information games; such as for poker at a superhuman
level, Pluribus[p] and Cepheus. DeepMind in the 2010s developed
a "generalized artificial intelligence" that could learn many
diverse Atari games on its own.
By 2020, Natural Language Processing systems such as the
enormous GPT-3 (then by far the largest artificial neural network)
were matching human performance on pre-existing benchmarks,
albeit without the system attaining commonsense understanding of
the contents of the benchmarks. DeepMind's AlphaFold 2 (2020)
demonstrated the ability to determine, in hours rather than months,
the 3D structure of a protein. Other applications predict the result
of judicial decisions, create art (such as poetry or painting)
and prove mathematical theorems.
Semiconductors and Artificial
Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) applications are everywhere, from big

data analytics and military equipment to facial recognition software
and self-driving cars. And they bring new challenges and
opportunities to the semiconductor industry every day.
As a reminder, AI describes a machine or software application’s
ability to reason, learn, and act in a manner similar to human
cognition. In essence, AI makes it possible for machines to think.
The beginnings of AI date back to the 1950s, but recent advances
in AI technology have seen a renaissance in the field. The
development of machine-learning algorithms capable of
processing massive amounts of data has opened new possibilities
for AI devices. Today’s AI applications can not only process data
but also learn from experience and apply that experience to
improve how they function.
With AI applications gaining traction in the industrial, retail, health
care, military, research, and consumer sectors, demand for
specialized sensors, integrated circuits, improved memory, and
enhanced processors is increasing. And this demand is changing
the semiconductor supply chain by directly impacting design and
manufacturing decisions.
How will AI affect semiconductor design and
production?

AI demands will have lasting impacts on semiconductor design

and production. In large part, this is because the amount of data
processed and stored by AI applications is massive.
Semiconductor architectural improvements are needed to address
data use in AI-integrated circuits. Improvements in semiconductor
design for AI will be less about improving overall performance and
more about speeding the movement of data in and out of memory
with increased power and more efficient memory systems.
One option is the design of chips for AI neural networks that
perform like human brain synapses. Instead of sending constant
signals, such chips would “fire” and send data only when needed.
Nonvolatile memory may also see more use in AI-related
semiconductor designs. Nonvolatile memory can hold saved data
without power. Combining nonvolatile memory on chips with
processing logic would make “system on a chip” processors
possible, which could meet the demands of AI algorithms.
While semiconductor design improvements are emerging to meet
the data demands of AI applications, they pose potential
production challenges. As a result of memory needs, AI chips
today are quite large. With this large chip size, it is not
economically easy for a chip vendor to make money while working
on a specialized hardware. This is because it is very costly to
manufacture a specialized AI chip for every application.
A general-purpose AI platform would help address this challenge.
System and chip vendors would still be able to augment the
general-purpose platform with accelerators, sensors, and
inputs/outputs. This would allow manufacturers to customize the
platform for the different workload requirements of any application
while also saving on costs. An additional benefit of a general-
purpose AI platform is that it can facilitate faster evolution of an
application ecosystem.
From a production standpoint, the semiconductor industry will also
itself benefit from AI adoption. AI will be present at all process
points, proving the data needed to reduce material losses, improve
production efficiency, and reduce production times

Why semiconductor companies must define

their AI strategy
The semiconductor market has, for most of the last decade, seen
much of its profits tied to the smartphone and mobile device
market. As the smartphone market begins to plateau, the
semiconductor industry must find other growth opportunities.
AI applications, especially in the big data, autonomous vehicles,
and industrial robotics industries, can provide those opportunities.
By defining and then putting together their AI strategies now,
semiconductor manufacturers can position themselves to take full
advantage of the spreading AI market.

How will AI affect the semiconductor market?

AI offers semiconductor companies the chance to get the most
value from the technology stack, the collection of hardware and
services used to run applications. In the software-dependent world
of PCs and mobile devices, the semiconductor industry is only able
to capture 20 to 30 percent of the total value of the PC stack and
as little as 10 to 20 percent of the mobile market.
Within the AI sector, the technology stack requires more hardware,
especially in the fields of memory and sensors. This may allow the
semiconductor market to control 40 to 50 percent of the total value
of the stack, according to the Redline Group.
In addition, many AI applications will require specialized end-to-
end solutions, which will necessitate changes to the semiconductor
supply chain. Semiconductor companies—especially smaller
companies producing niche products for the automotive and IoT
industries—will be able to capitalize on markets by providing
customized microvertical solutions addressing customer pain
points related to storage, memory, and specialized computing
needs.
How does AI change the demand for
semiconductor chips?
The global AI market is forecast to grow to $390.9 billion by 2025,
representing a compound annual growth rate of 55.6 percent over
that short period. Hardware lies at the foundation of each AI
application.
Storage will see the highest growth, but the semiconductor
industry will reap the most profit by supplying computing, memory,
and networking solutions. Demand for semiconductor chips will
mirror the rapid ascent of the AI market.

How AI technology provides opportunities for

semiconductor companies
According to McKinsey, AI accelerator chips (chips designed to
work with neural networks and machine learning) will see a growth
rate of approximately 18 percent annually—five times greater than
that seen for semiconductors used in non-AI applications. Areas of
high growth will include AI chips for autonomous vehicles and in
the broader field of neural networks.
Neural networks are specialized AI algorithms based on the
human brain. The networks are capable of interpreting sensory
data and delivering patterns in large amounts of unstructured data.
Neural networks find use in predictive analysis, facial recognition,
targeted marketing, and self-driving cars. And they require AI
accelerators and multiple inferencing chips, all of which the
semiconductor industry will supply.

How can semiconductor companies benefit

from AI technology?
AI adoption holds the possibility for growth in the following areas of
semiconductor manufacturing:

 Workload-specific AI accelerators
 Nonvolatile memory
 High-speed interconnected hardware
 High-bandwidth memory
 On-chip memory
 Storage
 Networking chips
Investing in research and development while building relationships
with AI software providers will help chip manufacturers capture
their share of these markets—if they can meet the coming demand.

Impact of artificial intelligence on the

semiconductor industry
The immediate future of AI has the potential to put strain on the
industry supply chain unless semiconductor manufacturers plan to
meet demand now. At the same time, the industry will itself benefit
from AI, whose applications throughout the manufacturing process
will improve efficiency while cutting costs.

How will AI technology affect semiconductor

production?
Just as other industries are embracing AI, so too is
the semiconductor industry . AI expertise coupled with high-
performance computing will allow manufacturers to develop new
efficiency benchmarks and increase output.
One of the key challenges to the semiconductor supply chain is
chip production processing time. The time between initial
processing and the final product takes weeks. And during this time,
up to 30 percent of production costs is lost to testing and yield
losses.
Embedding AI applications into the production cycle allows
companies to systematically analyze losses at every stage of
production so manufacturers can optimize operating processes.
This ability will become even more valuable when working with
next-generation semiconductor materials, which tend to be more
expensive (and volatile) than traditional silicon.

How will AI technology affect the workforce in

the semiconductor industry?
While the rise of AI brings many opportunities to the
semiconductor industry, it also heralds a crisis in talent acquisition.
The larger tech companies—most notably Google, Apple,
Facebook, Amazon, and the like—are investing heavily in AI
research, development, and implementation, especially in the
arenas of big data analytics and deep learning.
This represents two challenges to chip makers. First, the major
players in the AI industry increasingly develop their own hardware
as this allows them to customize proprietary hardware to match
their AI applications’ specific needs. This move toward in-house
chip production, by extension, means the largest tech companies
will purchase less from dedicated chip manufacturers.
Second—and this is where workforce considerations come into
play—tech giants designing and manufacturing their own chips in
house will need employees. With limited talent pools in both AI and
the semiconductor industry, this will lead to talent shortages.

Future of semiconductors and artificial

intelligence
Self-driving cars. High-performance computing. Quantum
computing. AI makes what was science fiction at the turn of the
century into reality. With these AI advances come demands for
new semiconductor technology and deep changes to the industry.

How is artificial intelligence expected to affect

the semiconductor industry in the future?
To adapt to an industry increasingly dominated by the need for AI
hardware, semiconductor manufacturers will need to provide
industry-specific end-to-end solutions, innovation, and the
development of new software ecosystems.
End-to-end services will require chip makers to work with partners
to develop industry-specific AI hardware. While this may limit the
semiconductor manufacturer to working with only certain industries,
the alternative—the traditional production of general products—
may not attract the same customers it does at present. An
exception would be the production of cross-industry solutions that
serve the needs of an interrelated group of industries.
With the production of specialized products comes the need to
develop existing ecosystems with partners and software
developers. The goal of such ecosystems is to develop
relationships in which partners rely on and prefer the
semiconductor company’s hardware. Semiconductor
manufacturers will need to produce hardware that partners cannot
find elsewhere at similar value. Such hardware—coupled with
simple interfaces, dev kits, and excellent technical support—will
help build long-lasting relationships with AI developers.
Innovation, as always, plays a role in the future of semiconductors.
In addition to the ongoing efforts to circumvent the limitations of
Moore’s Law, semiconductor research and development will need
to consider how sensors, memory, and microprocessors enable
and support emerging AI applications. Focusing on serving the
needs of AI and the equally important IoT industry will help keep
chip makers at the forefront of the industry.

What is driving the popularity of artificial

intelligence in the semiconductor industry?
Demand from both the public and private sectors is driving the
rapid development of AI—and as a result the importance of AI to
the semiconductor industry. Of special note is the trend toward
advanced driver assistance systems and electric vehicles. Even if
the arrival of truly autonomous vehicles in large numbers remains
years away, automotive AI applications for monitoring engine
performance, mileage, and driver habits are already here.
Insurance companies are already using in-car AI apps to evaluate
driving habits and determine premium rates.
While the smartphone industry is plateauing in terms of growth, the
demand for embedded AI in mobile devices is growing. Phones
use AI for navigation, for voice-to-text software, for facial
recognition security, and for personal assistants. The advent of
Alexa and other smart home hubs—and their ability to be
controlled from afar by phone apps—represents another growth
area for AI.
Then there are the uses for AI the general public is only
tangentially aware of. City planners increasingly rely on AI to report
on traffic volume, sewer usage, and infrastructure maintenance.
Utility companies use AI to set electricity and water rates or to alert
technicians to incidents or maintenance events.
Retail and online retail stores use AI to predict consumer needs
and preferences—with what some see as alarming precision.
Similar software is used by major social network platforms when
choosing content and ads for individual users. AI has applications
in health care, bioscience, industry, government, and the military—
anywhere where large amounts of data need to be processed
quickly, analyzed, and acted upon.

Why must the semiconductor industry embrace

artificial intelligence?
AI has negative uses as well as positive—the Cambridge
Analytica scandal proved how powerful a tool AI can be when
used to identify and manipulate people’s behavior and opinions.
Like so many technologies, AI is a double-edged sword. One thing
it is not is temporary. AI applications are here to stay and will only
become more commonplace and complicated with time. As every
AI task needs to be founded on reliable hardware, the
semiconductor industry has a vested interest in seeing AI succeed.