Economic Uncertainty, the Global Economy and Semiconductors

By Cadence

July 25, 2016

The Monday before SEMICON West starts, there are two events that run in parallel in the Marriott Hotel. One is imec's US technology forum. Since I already attended the two-day version in Brussels, and wrote about it over the last couple of months, I attended the other event, the SEMI/Gartner Market Symposium. This is largely focused on the semiconductor equipment industry. But the health of the equipment industry is a sign of the future health of the semiconductor industry. And in Mike Santorini's memorable words, "The semiconductor industry is the speedboat towing the waterskier of EDA." If the boat is going fast then waterskiing is easy, but if it slows then EDA gradually sinks into the water.

The symposium started with a presentation by Duncan Meldrum of Hilltop Economics titled Economic Uncertainty, the Global Economy and Semiconductors. He cautioned everyone that the data he was presenting did not yet take account of Brexit. Like almost everyone, he had assumed that the Brexit vote would come down as "stay" not "leave" and so he hadn't really spent any time on it.

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