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Software is the backbone of several industries, including semiconductor. Several (maybe all) semiconductor activities cannot work without a software solution and are valid for several key stages like design, manufacturing, supply chain, and many more.
This growing reliance on several stages is the primary reason it has become vital to utilize the best solution for all the stages of semiconductor product development. Doing so enables defect-free and error-free solutions for the end customers.
The advancement in software tools has allowed the semiconductor industry to lower the time to market. As more advanced semiconductor technologies get deployed, the importance of developing faster and more accurate software will grow further and increase the reliance of the semiconductor industry on software solutions.
Automation: Automated software solutions plays a critical role in capturing defects and errors during design or manufacturing stages.
Time To Market: Software speeds the process of developing and launching semiconductor products. The reason is the ability to simulate and capture all the errors before products go to the customer.
One key feature of the software is automation. It speeds up designing and also ensures defects get captured ahead of time. On another side, the software is powering the designing process of highly complex products without human interference.
In the long run, such solutions may or may not work. However, raises questions of how much more software solutions can do (concerning design and manufacturing) and how it will impact the semiconductor industry.
Apart from semiconductor product development (design and manufacturing), the software also plays a vital role in semiconductor information management. It includes capturing and storing all the required data for a very long time.
Software solutions around information and data management have been around for decades. However, the growing data complexity and the need to capture/process the data faster is leading bottleneck’s in the software solutions themselves. It has raised the demand for a new generation of software solutions to pull the information faster than ever.
Management: Information management is a part of semiconductor product development and demands easy-to-use software solutions.
Life Cycle: Managing product information demands long-term software-powered data storage and retrieval.
As the need to reduce the time to market grows, the demand for software-driven automation will grow more. Semiconductor-focused software automation has been in place for several years. However, the market needs to enable new types of silicon products for the emerging market is demands novel ways to design and manufacture.
All these requirements will further grow the reliance of the semiconductor industry on software and thus presents an opportunity to innovate software solutions to meet growing semiconductor industry demand.
