At the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2026 in San Francisco, Anirudh Devgan, President and CEO of Cadence, outlined a defining shift for the semiconductor industry:
artificial intelligence is transforming not only the systems we build, but the way we engineer them.
The industry has entered an AI supercycle defined by unprecedented scale and complexity. Demand for intelligence is driving exponential growth in compute, pushing the limits of performance, power efficiency, and system integration. Industry forecasts project the semiconductor market to approach $1.2 trillion by 2030, and current momentum suggests the industry could reach the $1 trillion milestone as early as this year.
But the most important shift is not just what we are building, it is how we design it.
As highlighted at ISSCC, the industry’s next scaling challenge is no longer transistor density alone; it is engineering productivity.