Balancing act: breaking the energy curve while keeping pace with soaring data needs

One of the biggest current drivers of demand is the mobile telecommunications industry, with 5G fueling a particular surge. The processing needs of 5G technology are around 300 times greater than those of 4G—largely because it involves radio energy being directed toward a device, which requires significantly higher signal processing. During the past 30 years, the mobile industry has experienced its own equivalent to Moore’s Law: data rates have increased by around 100 times every 10 years, and that trend is expected to continue over the coming 10 years. Nevertheless, the industry must match rising data needs with its commitment to reaching net zero by 2040. As a result, manufacturers are focusing on improving energy per bit, as well as developing and implementing smart energy solutions.

Data rates are increasing exponentially under 5G, but the capacity of the mobile networks is not growing as rapidly. At the same time, the industry is also under pressure to keep up with the higher energy consumption of the baseband processors used in 5G. This type of processing is significantly more complex and consumes much higher amounts of energy because it uses advanced MIMO beamforming (a technique that focuses a wireless signal toward a specific receiving device, rather than have the signal spread in all directions, like from a broadcast antenna). With data rates exploding, it will be crucial for manufacturers to find ways to keep energy consumption constant, or even reduce it—breaking the energy curve—for example, by deploying advanced AI software architecture to create sleep modes for systems that are not being used.

Leading-edge nodes have not diminished demand for legacy products

Demand for high-performance computing that can process vast amounts of data will continue to grow, but the need for legacy products remains a strong driver of the industry. Semiconductor manufacturing is a highly capital-intensive business, especially in the advanced nodes space. And Moore’s Law means that manufacturers must continually strive to shrink the scale of their chips and reduce lithography to ever-decreasing dimensions.