This post is part of our “Industry Insights and Primers” series. Control what types of posts you receive from us.
If you’re not an engineer or otherwise technically inclined, you may have found it challenging to understand what really goes on in the semiconductor sector. The latter has emerged as hugely important to the future of artificial intelligence, and its weighting in key market indices has grown. As a result, even if we consider semiconductors outside our “circle of competence”, it may be worthwhile to dig into the sector and the key players.
In this multi-part series, we attempt to make semiconductors understandable to non-technical investors. The goal is to educate ourselves on the industry value chain in order to gain appreciation for the market positioning, business models, and sustainability of competitive advantage of the key players, ranging from well-known giants such as TSMC and Nvidia to lessor-known but deeply entrenched players such as Cadence and Synopsys. Other companies we seek to understand as part of this series include AMD, Applied Materials, ASML, Micron, and Texas Instruments, to name a few.
We have the privilege of learning from a former semiconductor industry insider: Adarsh Shyamsundar has two decades of experience in the industry. From 2002-2008, Adi was at Intel, including as product engineer and test team leader. From 2008-2022, he served at Micron in various roles, including as senior product engineer, engineering manager, and senior manager. Adi caught the investing bug in 2006 and founded Polaris Capital Management, based in El Dorado Hills, California, in 2022. He holds a MS in Electrical Engineering degree from Arizona State University and an MBA from the University of California at Davis.
In this third installment, recorded in February 2025, we cover:
Semiconductor test equipment, and its role
Test equipment providers: Advantest, Teradyne, Agilent, FormFactor
Chip design and types of chips (CPUs, GPUs, etc.)
In the second installment, recorded in January 2025, we covered:
Electronic design automation (EDA) software, and its role
EDA software leaders: Cadence Design, Synopsys, Mentor (Siemens)
Semiconductor equipment manufacturers, and role in the value chain
Players: ASML, AMAT, Lam Research, KLA Corp., Tokyo Electron
John’s questions for Adi
In the first installment, recorded in December 2024, we covered:
What is a semiconductor?
Brief industry history
The process of going from silicon to chip
Industry value chain
Some of the key players and how they fit in
John’s questions for Adi
If you would like to learn more about the semiconductor sector, we highly recommend Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.
