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The semiconductor industry faces four immense challenges: technology complexity, regionalization, workforce development, and sustainability.  

Tackling these four challenges requires us all to think and act differently. That’s why today we announced Semiverse™ Solutions, a suite of computational products that brings together Lam’s expertise in software development, simulation and modeling, data systems, and advanced analytics. 

• Read the press release
• ​Related: SEMulator3D and the Future of Engineering Education  

Our Semiverse™ Solutions portfolio is designed to meet these challenges head on by joining the physical and virtual semiconductor worlds into a seamless ecosystem. Doing so can augment human ingenuity with computers to help innovate at scale, collaborate easily across borders, help train the next generation, and minimize our environmental impact.  

Costly Complexity  
Developing the next breakthrough in semiconductor technology can be complex, time consuming, and costly, requiring experimentation and expertise in a wide range of technology disciplines from plasma physics to artificial intelligence to robotics. As advanced technologies scale to smaller and 3D geometries, development must be dramatically accelerated at lower costs to support future products. 

The Semiverse™ Solutions products support an interconnected ecosystem of virtual tools and digital twins, allowing researchers to explore promising ideas and refine new processes at significantly lower cost, thereby reducing time consuming trial-and-error physical experimentation. The virtual domain spans the global lab and engineering footprint to increase collaboration and technical contribution across the entire talent ecosystem. 

Increased Regionalization 
Countries around the world are investing to develop their own domestic semiconductor industries, which can add physical boundaries that impede collaboration. Regionalization hinders efficient collaboration across physical distances, which is, ideally, not how this industry should work, whether it's in R&D or ramping up processes for high yield manufacturing. 

Semiverse™ Solutions supports a virtual ecosystem to enable labs and fabs to share their expertise and collaborate more seamlessly with colleagues around the world.     

Workforce Development 
Our industry faces a major talent shortage to meet future demand. Training future semiconductor engineers is an even more daunting task as few universities have access to the latest semiconductor equipment and advanced integrated technologies. Bringing our work to the virtual world will allow us to safely train a new generation of semiconductor engineers and tap into new talent pools around the world. 

If the semiconductor ecosystem wants to attract STEM students from opportunities in other fields, workforce development must be a top priority. Semiverse™ Solutions can give students an opportunity they might otherwise never have had—the chance to learn from and contribute to our industry. 

• Related: Today the U.S. and Indian governments announced Lam’s proposal to deliver a virtual nano fabrication environment to help train the next generation of semiconductor engineers in India to accelerate India’s semiconductor education and workforce development goals. 

Sustainable Solutions 
As the semiconductor industry pursues new breakthroughs, we must all be mindful of the environmental impact of our work. The process of experimenting and creating new breakthroughs requires significant energy consumption and the use of complex chemistries.  

Lam, like other companies in our industry, has set goals for achieving net zero. We must develop with the environment fully in mind. By taking our industry into the digital space, Semiverse™ Solutions can significantly improve the sustainability of our work. 

Semiverse™ Solutions 
Through the full strength of Lam’s portfolio including our capabilities in virtual technology, processing, and simulations, as well as Equipment Intelligence® and applications in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we can enable boundary-less collaboration, foster creativity, and increase speed to solution. 

Yes, we are excited by complexity. We are also driven by collaboration. The joint pursuit of these passions is the only way our industry can accelerate innovation while reducing costs, all in an effort to advance chipmaking and achieve the unthinkable. Imagine the possibilities.  

David Fried, CVP, is the head of Lam’s Semiverse™ Solutions group. 

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This article contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include any statements that are not statements of historical fact, including statements regarding industry trends and market opportunities, and the benefits of Semiverse™ Solutions and other products and services, including in terms of speed, cost, safety, collaboration and environmental impact. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including the risks and uncertainties described in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including specifically the Risk Factors described in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.  You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.  We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.