Beyond nanometers: How semiconductors shape our future

In his speech, Jochen Hanebeck, CEO of Infineon Technologies, shows how semiconductors help us master the two big challenges our society is facing: driving decarbonization and digitalization. 

Today, power generation (electricity and heat production) and industry account for two-thirds of global CO2 emissions, followed by mobility as the third largest emitter. 

Highly efficient systems based on wide band gap semiconductors will play a major role in driving decarbonization. Recently GaN is getting a lot of attention and will likely be the preferred technology by the end of the decade for several core applications, including chargers, data centers, onboard chargers, low-power motor control, and residential solar.

Now that AI is taking the world by storm, AI-enabled systems and the resulting increase in global data generation will lead to an exponential demand for electricity, potentially causing even more CO2 emissions. This is why we need to make computing green.

In addition to green energy, green computing requires new approaches to power-efficient solutions based on new semiconductor materials and topologies, as well as new innovative architectures, such as neuromorphic structures, to significantly increase the computing power per energy unit.