PwC Consulting "AI Adoption Rate 9%... Semiconductor Market Continues High Growth"

'Report on Semiconductor Industry Outlook Leading the AI Era'

Considering the current AI adoption rate of just over 9%, the semiconductor market led by AI is expected to continue its high growth in the future. PwC Consulting announced on the 17th that it has published a report titled “Semiconductor Industry Outlook Driving the AI Era” containing such projections.

According to the report, AI is driving growth in the semiconductor market, with the global semiconductor market size estimated to grow 17% year-on-year to $642 billion (approximately 922 trillion KRW) this year.

The report focused on the growth of memory semiconductors, automotive software semiconductors, and customized semiconductor markets directly linked to AI. In the case of memory semiconductors, with the emergence of AI models such as ChatGPT, graphics processing units (GPUs), specialized for parallel processing of large volumes of data simultaneously, have rapidly risen as AI-dedicated semiconductors. Consequently, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is essential for GPUs, is benefiting. The HBM market, which was only $4 billion last year, is expected to grow rapidly at an average annual rate of 58%, reaching $38 billion by 2028.

Additionally, the report pointed out automotive semiconductors, stating, “With the advent of electrification and software-defined vehicles (SDVs), modern vehicles show a high dependence on electronic components.” Accordingly, the usage of on-device AI semiconductors for autonomous driving and power semiconductors (PMICs) responsible for power distribution in electric vehicle batteries are expected to increase explosively.

The report also anticipated that the importance of customized semiconductors tailored to customer demands will grow due to the convergence of technologies across various industries and the advancement of performance required by consumers. In particular, it highlighted the rapidly increasing demand for data centers capable of processing the massive data generated by the increase in various content such as video and the development of big data technologies. The report stated, “The market size of customized integrated circuits (ICs) for data center servers is currently around $10 billion and is expected to grow more than twice to $24 billion by 2028.”

Finally, the report presented the smooth supply of high-performance semiconductors and each company’s capabilities and systems to maximize their utilization as ways to maintain competitiveness for leading companies in the upcoming AI era.

Beom Yong-gyun, PwC Consulting’s Global Semiconductor Leader who published the report, said, “To survive in the semiconductor competition in the AI era, it is essential to create a global cluster that transcends borders beyond the existing region-centered semiconductor clusters and to build a semiconductor ecosystem based on this.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.