6 Semiconductor Trends in 2025: Experts’ View on Chips Future

Excerpt from “6 Semiconductor Trends in 2025: Experts’ View on Chips Future” by Linda Rosencrance. See the full article on Technopedia

4. A New Era for US Chips

2025 is going to be a pivotal year for the semiconductor industry, said Aaron Ritchie, SVP, business development at strategic partnerships at Smoothstack. Fueled by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, the US is poised to become a significant producer of high-tech microchips.

“Currently, most microchips used in products critical to the US economy, e.g., cars, airplanes, medical equipment, defense systems, data centers, etc., are produced outside of the US,” he said. “The aim is to create the infrastructure and workforce to produce these high-tech chips in the US.”

Many semiconductor companies are currently constructing “mega-fabs,” manufacturing plants significantly larger than existing microchip fabrication facilities, Ritchie said.

“The resources to accomplish this will come from the CHIPS Act and chipmakers themselves,” he told Techopedia. “One of the critical aspects of this effort will be the ability for chipmakers to ramp up massive construction efforts and establish a process to produce the required number of employees to run and operate the mega-fabs.”

Chipmakers need various ways to find skilled workers, Ritchie noted. A new method called hire-train-deploy helps recruit people from diverse backgrounds and identifies those with the essential skills needed to succeed in mega-fab environments and then training them to work in those environments.

“The next 12 months will see semiconductor tool vendors, chip designers, and fabs laying the groundwork for this significant expansion,” he said.