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Age of convergence and exascale computing drive
ATE requirements
By Matthias Stahl [Advantest Corp.]
T he t e ch nolog y world is This age of convergence represents the convergence saw annual semiconductor
currently in the midst of the
buying waves extending back 60 years.
age of convergence—that is, latest wave in a series of semiconductor sales rise from $335 billion in 2015 to
reach $527.2 billion this year (a 19.7%
the convergence of data from a diverse In the 1960s, the military industrial increase from the 2020 sales total of
range of applications and data sources. complex drove worldwide annual $440.4 billion), according to data from
These sources include anything that semiconductor sales beyond $1.4 billion. the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics
creates data—ranging from humans, who The age of business computing coupled (WSTS) organization [1]. (Figure 1 tracks
create data using voice, to automotive, with the emergence of the first personal the buying waves over 60 years. The
mobile, and wireless/Internet of Things computers and networks saw annual chart was created three years ago, but
(IoT) devices. Data sources also include semiconductor sales exceed $5.9 billion its estimates still track well with recent
edge-computing devices and the servers in the mid- to late-1970s. The age of the WSTS updates.)
that store the massive amounts of data internet and the initial age of mobility The age of convergence is bringing
needed for high-performance computing drove semiconductor sales to $50.5 billion about the increasing use of natural
(HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), in 1990. And the addition of mobile user interfaces, in which we interact
machine learning (ML), and many computing saw sales exceed $166 billion with devices and systems using natural
other applications. in the early 2000s. Finally, the age of speech, gestures, hearing, and vision.
Figure 1: Innovation has driven waves of semiconductor purchasing over the last 60 years. SOURCE: WSTS data, Macquarie Research estimates, October 2017.
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