“EV is the biggest white elephant mankind has ever invented,” said Penn, “the real disruption will come from hydrogen powered cars which refuel in five minutes – they are the real Green alternative.”
The absurdity of some government attitudes on EVs is shown by the fact that California is insisting that petrol vehicles vehicles are to be phased out by 2035 but, said Penn,“California has just imposed a ban on charging cars overnight because the grid can’t cope.”
Penn sees fundamental flaws in the strategy being followed by the EU and USA aimed at on-shoring semiconductor plants.
“It’s not market driven,“ said Penn, “it’s not in the interests of shareholders, and it’s not liked by the financial community. In the US the DoD are the only people who want it.”
Penn sees a big future for the smart watch as a way to monitor the body. “This is the real future of smart watches,” said Penn, “Apple is positioning itself to be the dominant player and Imec, which is as powerful as Apple technologically, is doing the same thing. Apple and Imec will dominate this sector.”
Penn believes that there is “a lot of life left in Moore’s Law progression, the industry is very good at solving unsolvable problems.“
“TSMC leads the way, for now,” said Penn, “the N3 node was not ready for iPhone 14 so it’s using a tuned-up N5+ node labelled N4. TSMC‘s N3 node is now using FinFET, unlike Samsung and Intel which are using GAA, however TSMC’s N3 starts production this month vs next year for Samsung and Intel.”
Asked by EW if he’d put a bet on Intel catching up with the leaders on process technology by 2024, Penn replied: “ “It’s going to be a tight deadline. They are experts and they are doing the right things, but whether it’s 2024 or 2025 I don’t know. I give them a good chance – better than 50-50 – but it’s not certain.”
Despite current vagaries Penn sees plenty of growth drivers to keep the industry on its traditional track of expanding its unit shipments by 8% a year.
These are: Smart phones PC and consumer, the communications backbone, servers, automotive including EV, energy including alternative energy, IoT, home automation, industrial including robotics, transportation, AI, games consoles, bio and eco-medical, quantum computing and sensors,.
