Public-Private Partnerships in Semiconductors: Do they work?

G. Dan Hutcheson

The Chip Insider®

Summary:

Public-Private Partnerships in Semiconductors: Do they work? I recently had the honor of addressing the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee on Global Microelectronics. They asked me to focus on the state of America’s semiconductor industry and how public-private partnerships can be used to strengthen it – two topics which are surprisingly controversial.

These are two very bipolar position points. You can find plenty of uninformed media posts about how woefully behind America is to China in chip technology … There is a viral process of one-upmanship where the greater the volume of uninformed posts, the more the fallacious becomes factual to the world. On the other hand, if you ask any U.S. chip company if they are behind, they can easily color a picture depicting why they’re ahead with one hand while pointing the finger with the other hand to a neighbor who is behind. That neighbor is usually Intel because they’ve been the factoid example in most ‘America’s behind’ posts in part because they’ve been transparent about slipped deliverables… So, reality gets clouded in a soup of spin.

This Chip Insider addresses the competitive position of the U.S. in the global semiconductor ecosystem. It cautions to be wary of publicly available data – especially politicized data – and ask the stupid question, such as the data used to help pass the EU’s Chips Act, showing Europe had 44% market share in 1990. The stupid question is, why was everyone so worried about Japan?

I also address the question of public-private partnerships strengthening semiconductor manufacturing. And describe ways to revive America’s semiconductor ecosystem.

"A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan tomorrow” — General George S. Patton

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