When I took this photo back on March 13, 2020, overlooking this busy highway that connects Petaling Jaya with Kuala Lumpur, I didn’t know that I was just a few hours away from the 1st Movement Control Order (MCO)/lockdown in Malaysia. And, and phrases like “new normal”, “supply chain disruptions”, “Semiconductor shortage” are what will top the news in the next months.

If you use a field glass, you will also see the Headquarters of NXP Semiconductors Sdn Bhd in Petaling Jaya.  Ofcourse, a field glass might magnify your view but it won’t be able to predict that in June 2021, NXP Semiconductors Sdn Bhd would operate at 60% of their workforce and can only operate fully once 80 to 100 percent of the workers were vaccinated.

These disruptions are causing Europe to rethink its semiconductor manufacturing strategies by, for example, planning to build edge fabs, especially that according to Bruegel, Europe’s market share of semiconductor production is only 2 percent. 

My quark news for today is coming from the Netherlands with NXP semiconductors.

NXP is powering Electronic Design Automation in the cloud (Powered by AWS) in order to accelerate semiconductor innovation and getting new designs to market faster. Besides, that will enhance the productivity for semiconductor design and verification, and free its engineers to focus on chip innovation. In my point of view, is a bold move to increase their footprint in the right spot of the semiconductor industry, by focusing on innovation in chip design and software instead of shifting the focus to fabrication. 

All this will open up a couple of questions which we will be covering in an upcoming blog piece answering questions such as why there is semiconductor shortage, when did semiconductor shortage start, and how to build supply chain resilience.

To Know More about NXP’s cloud-based EDA, check AWS blog published just now. Stay tuned for our coverage on the semiconductor shortage issue.

 

This brought to you by our Quark News Edition.