2024 Outlook with Matt Burns of Samtec

Matt develops go-to-market strategies for Samtec’s Silicon to Silicon solutions. Over the course of 20+ years, he has been a leader in design, technical sales and marketing in the telecommunications, medical and electronic components industries. It has been an honor working with Matt and his team for the last 3 years and I value his input, absolutely.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Samtec designs and manufactures high-performance interconnect solutions including copper connectors and cable assemblies, RF connectors and cable assemblies, and a growing portfolio of embedded optical transceivers. Currently, I lead a highly experienced team of marketing and technical professionals evangelizing Samtec’s high-performance interconnect solutions and services.

What was the most exciting high point of 2023 for your company?

You’d think that would be an easy question to answer, but I think that we survived 2023 was the highlight. I find joy when we can provide our customers and partners the right interconnect solution for their specific challenge. AI HW system architectures are evolving quickly. I am sure SemiWiki.com readers see that at the chiplet, substrate or package level. At Samtec, we see that at the system level. Density, higher speeds and flexible, scalable interconnects are a must. In 2023, we were able to deliver new solutions for several application-specific AI implementations. As we move in to 2024, we are challenged to develop new solutions for the next gen of AI systems. We can’t wait!

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2023?

Surviving. There were a lot of headwinds in 2023. Supply chains obviously normalized post-pandemic. Inflation seems to be coming under control. Global conflicts seem to be on the rise, so that can disrupt business cycles. There are many more.

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

Samtec is very flexible and nimble. We can respond to challenges, whatever they may be, pretty quickly. Our focus is always on the customer. It’s a culture deeply ingrained in our ethos of find a solution to challenges our customers and partners face. As we continually execute to answer those challenges, long term relationships and trust are formed. Obviously, we are not immune to business cycles. However, our laser focus on serving the customer over the long term is always a winning strategy.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2024 will be, and why?

I can’t predict the future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if AI from the data center to the intelligent edge continues to provide new opportunities. The release of ChatGPT was obviously an inflection point. LLMs and related AI applications are going to grow in complexity. The need for more computing is not going to slow down. New AI chipsets are emerging. Linking those chipsets is what we do best.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

It’s all about getting data from Point A to Point B as quickly and as reliably as possible. We are introducing our expanded 224 Gbps PAM4 product portfolio at the upcoming DesignCon 2024 trade show. Our 112 Gbps PAM4 solutions are still being designed into new products. We see new applications for our embedded optical transceivers, even in the data center. Our expanding 18-110 GHz RF cable, cable assembly and connector portfolio target semiconductor development and test applications as well.

What conferences did you attend in 2023 and how was the traffic?

Coming out of the pandemic, I was curious to see if engineers really wanted to live in a virtual or digital world most of the time. I was blown away at how many attendees we saw at our trade shows and conference around the world. North America and EMEA lead the way in 2022. We started seeing the same trends with growing attendance in APAC events in 2H23. Engineers want to see new technology. They want to interact with the thought leaders and technologists that make it happen. Trade shows and conferences are essential for this. So we added a few events to our trade show schedule in 2023. Key annual events for Samtec include DesignCon, OFC, embedded world, the global PCI-SIG DevCons, IMS, ECOC, OCP, SuperComputing, and the AI Hardware and Edge AI Summits among others.

Will you attend conferences in 2024? Same or more?

In general, we will be at the same amount of conference or tradeshows in 2024. Going into the new year, we see some US-based shows like the AI Hardware and Edge AI Summit going to Europe. embedded world 2024 is coming to Austin in October 2024. electronica is always a big deal in Munich. We take advantage of those and more.

Additional questions or final comments?

Its always a pleasure talking with the SemiWiki.com team Thank you for your hard work keeping the semiconductor and interconnect industries updated and informed so thoroughly.

Thank you for kicking off this series of interviews Matt. I look forward to seeing you at DesignCon..

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