Since they were first described in 2002, there has been remarkable interest in developing and deploying digital twins to enable and accelerate smart manufacturing across many industries. While we have seen growing excitement in the technology within the semiconductor equipment industry, we are still in the very early innings of creating and capturing value from digital twins.

Most semiconductor industry observers know it takes hundreds of process steps to make a chip. They can picture overhead transfer systems speeding orange FOUPs (Front Opening Universal Pods) full of wafers from tool to tool, imagining each process step being executed as quickly as physics allows before the wafers are zipped off to the next machine. They can sense the science behind the high-stakes race to produce the most precisely completed wafers in the shortest possible time.

The semiconductor industry has proven itself more than capable of achieving growth by collaborating to overcome big challenges. Collectively, we have demonstrated innovation and resiliency that is fueling what several industry analyst firms project will be a $1 trillion semiconductor market by 2030 that could directly seed $3-4 trillion of global electronics growth.