In August, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, pledging $280 billion in government funding, including $52 billion to boost US domestic semiconductor manufacturing, into law. The new bipartisan Bill is aimed at reviving American innovation in the semiconductor field and revitalizing domestic manufacturing.
Due to the global microchip shortage — spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic — domestic manufacturers are incentivized to create more chip fabrication facilities in the U.S. and meet the growing demand by multiple industries that are looking to incorporate the following: IoT, IIoT, Robotics, Additive Manufacturing, LoRaWAN networks, Devices, Smartphones, and Autonomous vehicles.
The Bill includes semiconductor research investments, manufacturing grants, and investment tax credits for chip manufacturing. It also provides billions of dollars to fund scientific research and development in defense, artificial intelligence, robotics, and quantum computing.
Global Implications – 5G Devices
While the effects of the ongoing chip shortage on the automotive and consumer electronics industries have dominated headlines, the need for semiconductors is far more widespread as the Internet of Things (IoT) has taken on an increasingly pivotal role in the business world.
As the IoT industry continues to grow and is anticipated to reach a 26.4% CAGR from 2022 to 2029, the need for semiconductors will multiply with the increased demand for smart devices, vehicles, sensors, and computers. IoT devices have become less niche and have become vital to economic growth. End-point sensors and devices have been instrumented to allow for better decisions, making real-time tracking, automation, and security more accessible. The increase in supply of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) v in the U.S. market will allow for the proliferation of better systems. Major manufacturers, like Intel, have already expressed interest in working with the Department of Commerce to increase manufacturing capacity and “alleviate the current supply-demand imbalance favoring ASIA.”
It is conceivable that defense applications will show up sooner than those for the mass-market products. Nonetheless, our capability to utilize IoT will scale with its projected ubiquity.
The increased capability of IoT will be most acute in the domain of 5G. The true potential for 5G processing will be realized in processors, devices, and integrated chips, in creating a 5G and IoT infrastructure. With the passing of the CHIPs Act, the full capacity of 5G networks will be fully realized, and emerging innovations, like smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and lightning-fast global communication, will become a reality.
Additionally, the democratization of microprocessor production will reduce dependencies on foreign markets, particularly China and Taiwan, and ease up tension regarding the global supply chain, helping curtail inflation and potentiate new horizons for the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT).
Protected Landscape for AI Training
Engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare are all examples of industries benefiting from the integration of the IIoT. These industries will integrate more End-Point devices and advanced ASIC and derive benefits associated with the utilization of Artificial Intelligence for visibility into operations and Big Data analytics.
The Three Vs
IoT enables an increase in data volume, its variety, and velocity — allowing for better training of AI engines to derive analytics and situational behavior more quickly and accurately. This constant flow of detailed and varied information enables reliable machine learning and unbiased outcomes. AI will enable faster learning and applications to transform businesses into digital fronts.
There are many ways in which IIoT-informed AI systems can bring benefits across the board. The most apparent will gravitate to increasing employee productivity and safety, reducing costs from optimized asset utilization and sustainability, and predictive maintenance analytics that can significantly reduce the potential for downtime.
Secure ASIC Chips Made in the US
As IoT technology becomes more sophisticated, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) are becoming even more critical in aerospace, Industrial, and Automotive industries. Not only will they be an essential component in all of the smart devices in our lives, but they will also evolve with higher functionality and embedded encryption.
The current global chip shortage has created global supply issues and existential concerns. This is because the U.S. share of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity has dwindled from 37% in 1990 to 12% in 2022. Moreover, the demand for ASIC technology and specialized integrated circuits is outpacing the supply. It’s not just that the United States has lost ground overall. There is a huge dependency on Taiwan which currently accounts for 92% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity, according to a recent report by Reuters.
However, the funding from the new Bill has the potential to overturn the loss in market share and provide a more efficient means of integrating the specialized integrated circuits into the emerging artificial intelligence market, the expanding IoT technologies market, and the ever-growing consumer electronics, automotive, and telecommunications markets.
Seamlessly Embedded Security
The lack of growth in the Semiconductor market, especially in the Western Hemisphere, has exacerbated security concerns in the market. Ninety-two percent of data breaches- in the first quarter of 2022 came from cyber attacks aimed at finding vulnerabilities in networks and ASIC. This has caused heightened sensitivity amongst decision-makers charged with protecting our Critical Infrastructure and privacy.
Mass produced microchips have inherent flaws. They become known and exploitable! Many companies are vulnerable to weaknesses in their IoT applications. Because of the volume of networked components in these microchips, the need for sophisticated, proprietary, and protected ASICs from within is absolute.!.
In conventional “perimeter security” systems, the need to keep each one of these chips secure and up to date is imperative. The semiconductor shortage exacerbated this issue by making it harder to do so. Still, even as chips will become widely available, again, cloud and edge computing and an increasingly remote-based working environment will entice exploitations like never before.
Zero Trust Security
Rather than constantly trying to patch “holes” in security perimeters, the availability of specialized ASIC chips will allow for the implementation of a Zero Trust Security architecture. Unlike the traditional sense of perimeter security, in which the goal is to keep malicious actors out of the network — yet, become vulnerable as soon as the virtual perimeter is breached — Zero Trust systems do not grant implicit trust or permissions to devices or programs based on factors such as IP addresses, etc. Instead, Zero Trust systems encrypt and decrypt all relevant information locally and selectively, thus, allowing access based on specific credentials.
The Chips Act is ushering in a “Rethink” of what will constitute optimum security and protected protocols associated with sensors, devices, complex processes, and workflows that will incorporate data sets for AI training and operational visibility.
The Sertainty UXP Technology makes the most of a Zero Trust Architecture by providing active security at each level, making data intelligent enough to protect itself. With the Sertainty Data Privacy Platform, you can not only be confident about the privacy of your data at all times, but you can also centrally manage compliance requirements within the data, bringing decision and control functions and centralized protection, authentication, governance, and tracking to a Data-File and Sensor in which the output is trusted, immutable, and proven.