Outlook 2025 with David Hwang of Alchip

Dave Hwang joined Alchip in 2021 as General Manager of Alchip’s North America Business Unit.  He also serves as Senior Vice President, Business Development.  Prior to join Alchip, Dave served as Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing for Global Unichip and in a variety of management and technical roles at TSMC.  He holds a Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering from North Carolina State University.

What was the most exciting high point of 2024 for your company?

That’s a great question.  It’s been a very hectic year, for sure.  Alchip will, more than likely, achieve over $1 billion in revenue in 2024. That’s a huge milestone for any company.  But the biggest, most important milestones are our 2nm shuttle tape-out in September and our 3DIC design flow readiness, which we will announce in January.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2024?

By far, the biggest challenge has been finalizing the design flow for advanced packaging, which has its own set of unique challenges.  We’ve brought a new level of flexibility to our design platform to accommodate increasingly specific targets for both power consumption and high performance.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?

Ultimately, in the end, we introduced, and are now accepting designs, for our 3DIC design flow that has both flexibility and robustness.  Alchip’s silicon-proven 3DIC design flow optimizes 3DIC designs along three critical dimensions: power delivery, die-to-die electrical interconnect, and system-wide thermal characterization.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2025 will be, and why?

System companies, no doubt have become huge consumers of ASICs.  They see them as critical differentiators, particularly in AI and HPC applications.  We’re fairly aligned with the thinking that, in the not-too-distant future, system company investments in the development of ASICS are estimated to reach over several million AI chips in 2027-2028, creating a $60-$90 billion market.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

We are taking a holistic systems approach, developing a design platform to accommodate advanced packaging, advanced chiplet, and advanced process technologies.  We’re doubling down on adding engineering and resources throughout our global design centers to address market-specific HPC, AI, and automotive demand.

What conferences did you attend in 2024 and how was the traffic?

We take a significant presence in all TSMC events … The TSMC Technology Symposiums and OIP.  And we do it globally.  We also exhibit at industry events like Chiplet Summit and the AI Hardware Summit.

Will you attend conferences in 2025? Same or more?

We’ll add the Open Compute Platform to our plan, and we’ll look next to expand our presence in industry events and conferences.

How do customers engage with your company?

There is no one way.  Nearly every company is different, so we take a true ASIC approach and have a strategic flexible engagement model.  This allows companies to engage in multi-ways, through many entry points along the value chain.  Essentially, we customize the ASIC value chain to meet the specific needs.

Additional questions or final comments? 

Without a doubt, the AI/HPC market is the place to be.  The key differentiator will be advanced packaging, which will be absolutely required in all high-performance computing applications.  We see ourselves as leaders in this area.

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