Geopolitics, Covid-19, LLMs disrupted semiconductor supply chain: industry execs

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Geopolitics, Covid-19 and mainstreaming of large language models (LLMs) have disrupted the semiconductor supply chain, said a senior semiconductor industry executive on Wednesday at the Nasscom Future Forge Conclave.

“There were three key moments in the past three or four years that have brought the semiconductor ecosystem back to the forefront. First of them being geopolitics,” said Narendra Bhandrari, partner, Sea Fund, who has worked at Intel for more than two decades.

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Second, the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the automotive industry also played a role, he said. “Luxury cars were being sold in the market without entertainment systems because chips were not available and the supply chain got disrupted,” he said.

The watershed moment in the disruption of the semiconductor industry was however the mainstreaming of large language models, he said. “ChatGPT became a household name,” he said.

However, the challenge behind that was the unavailability of silicon and the short supply of it.
Senior executives from the semiconductor industry spoke at the conclave about semiconductor design in India, and semiconductor consumption market trends. Executives spoke about the outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) plant whose groundbreaking ceremony was recently held in Hyderabad, and the lack of packaging expertise in India.

Those present included representatives from India Electronics and Semiconductor Association, Sea Fund, Kaynes SemiCon, Morphing