Chicago, IL: PreScouter, a Chicago-based research intelligence firm, has compiled a new Intelligence Brief that examines the current state of the semiconductor industry, highlighting the manufacturing, supply chain, and technical challenges and providing guidance on how industry players can mitigate these challenges.

“The semiconductor industry is a key accelerator of new products and services across nearly every industry,” says Sofiane Boukhalfa, PhD, Technical Director at PreScouter. “Its central role as a provider of key components across multiple product categories has increased the impact of the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” he adds.

But the semiconductor industry is facing a critical time in its evolution, with supply chain shortages caused by COVID and large demands from different customers across different industries exacerbated by semiconductor processing challenges. Increased demand from IoT devices, chipsets for electric vehicles, and smartphones led to an all-time sales record in 2021, but companies are hampered by issues with raw materials provisioning and supply chain bottlenecks that have been exacerbated by disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This Intelligence Brief takes a look at the semiconductor industry as it stands today, from what is driving the growing demand for chips, to who the major players are, to how the complexities of the supply chain are hampering their efforts to meet demand. In addition to market forces, the report points out, the pandemic has also created issues that are likely to be ongoing even after the crisis passes. Also, there are challenges related to the capabilities of current technologies, particularly transistor architectures and semiconductor materials, that must be overcome in order to meet the need for ever-faster computing power.

For each of these challenges, PreScouter identifies the underlying problems and offers strategies for overcoming them, along with a timeline for when novel technologies will be available to overcome the technical challenges facing the semiconductor industry today.

According to Dr. Boukhalfa, “In this report, our goal was to help highlight some of the key challenges faced, as well as some of the innovative developments that will help drive this industry forward over the next several years.”

About PreScouter, Inc.: PreScouter provides research support services to help business leaders make better R&D, product development, and corporate development decisions. PreScouter’s custom-selected teams of Advanced Degree Researchers and Subject Matter Experts connect business leaders with new markets, commercializable technologies, industry-impacting startups, and other actionable data. PreScouter’s growing list of 500+ clients includes NASA, Pepsi, Emerson, Netflix, Airbus and Toshiba. For more info, please visit www.prescouter.com.