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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteThe Spring 2023 issue of Electronic Design was a 44-page collection of forecasts, not a single industry consensus. Its contributors expected advances in multi-die design, network evolution, digital engineering and testing, while warning that packaging, talent, software quality and manufacturing would constrain progress. Those statements describe what named contributors anticipated at the time—not verified outcomes.
How to read the 2023 forecast
Electronic Design framed its issue as a set of perspectives spanning semiconductor markets, engineering work, chip integration, communications, computing and product development. Some articles came from vendors with a direct stake in the technologies they discussed. Their forecasts are useful for understanding the assumptions and engineering priorities of early 2023, but they should not be treated as independent measurements of adoption or as a unified prediction.
The distinction matters throughout this article: the technology outlooks below are attributed to their contributors; survey figures are attributed to the organizations that reported them. Context statistics can illuminate the conditions engineers faced, but they do not by themselves prove a forecast right or wrong.
What the contributors expected
Semiconductors: another turn in a boom-and-bust market
Jim Handy, General Director of Objective Analysis, argued that the semiconductor industry was moving from unusually strong growth into a downturn. Using World Semiconductor Trade Statistics monthly revenue data presented as three-month moving averages, his feature described the market as cyclical and compared the COVID-era surge with earlier inventory and boom-and-bust cycles. It forecast a decline of nearly 20% in 2023, anticipated a return to health in 2024, and raised the possibility of another downturn later.
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These were contemporaneous estimates, not a record of what ultimately happened. The cycle discussion is Handy’s explanatory framework; it is not a universal formula for predicting the timing or depth of every semiconductor downturn.
Multi-die systems: more integration, more system-level work
Shekhar Kapoor and Michael Posner of Synopsys argued that multi-die systems were already reaching the market and predicted broader adoption in 2023 as the ecosystem matured. Their case was architectural: combining heterogeneous dies in one package could help designers manage power, performance, area, cost and time-to-market, scale system functions, reduce risk and create product variants. They pointed to progress in design and verification tools, IP and manufacturing as factors they expected to lower adoption barriers.
Keith Felton of Siemens EDA, writing in a June 2022 forecast for 2023, described the implementation work behind that outlook. He expected more heterogeneous integration in system-in-package designs, HDL-driven design flows, package-level design-rule checking and layout-versus-schematic verification, organic interposers, earlier thermal and electromechanical stress analysis, and wider system-level testing. These are Siemens’s expectations and recommendations, not neutral measurements of how widely the practices were adopted.
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Known-good-die testing alone, Felton argued, would not establish system function and reliability in complex 2.5D and 3D designs. A multi-die package also needs appropriate verification and test coverage across the assembled system. The engineering trade-offs include interposer and substrate choice, wiring density, thermal and electrical behavior, package size, cost, verification readiness and test coverage. The forecasts identify those as relevant decision factors but do not provide a quantitative head-to-head comparison of packaging options.
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5G: incremental deployment with operational complexity
Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy at Spirent Communications, expected continued expansion of 5G mid-band macro coverage, early production deployments of small cells and massive MIMO, and a gradual shift toward standalone cores. He also emphasized the operational and security complexity of multi-vendor, cloud-native networks. Open RAN, in his view, was progressing gradually through testing and trials rather than moving straight to broad deployment.
6G: a longer horizon and unresolved adoption questions
Roger Nichols and Colin Bauer of Keysight Technologies presented 6G as a longer-term development, with substantial spectrum work expected in the 2030s. Their outlook raised possible new use cases and operator models, as well as potential connectivity benefits for rural and remote industries. It also identified high cost and unequal adoption as concerns. These were contributor expectations about a developing technology, not evidence of confirmed 2023 deployments.
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Quantum computing: ambitious applications, distant capability
A multi-author Keysight feature connected quantum computing to possible applications in materials design, climate modeling and navigation, and to longer-term differences in regional capability. The article’s framing is an outlook on potential directions; it does not establish that these applications had become commercial capabilities in 2023.
Software quality and security: complexity raises the stakes
Scott Register, VP Security Solutions; Dan Krantz, CIO; Gareth Smith, GM Software Test Automation; and Dr. Eric Holland, Director of Quantum Engineering Solutions—all of Keysight—argued that increasing hardware capability and system complexity would intensify demands for software quality and security. They also forecast greater use of AI-assisted testing and tools usable by citizen developers. These points are predictions about engineering practice, not evidence that a particular testing approach had already improved software outcomes.
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Digital twins: a product-engineering tool with execution risks
Jeff Harris, Vice President, Global Marketing; Jonathon Wright, Chief Technology Evangelist; and Daniel Thomasson, VP of Engineering and R&D—all of Keysight—expected digital twins to gain importance in system design and testing. They associated twins with potential benefits in design cycles, hardware/software co-design, robustness, cost, manufacturability and serviceability.
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The authors also warned that building twins in-house without sufficient rigor could contribute to product recalls as connected products become more complex. Their source provides no measured recall rate and does not demonstrate that digital twins, or the absence of them, caused recalls; this is a risk forecast, not a quantified causal finding.
Neuromorphic devices: a direction for TinyML
Eldar Sido, MCU Product Marketing for TinyML at Renesas Electronics, described spiking neural networks as brain-inspired systems with time-dependent operation. The feature presents neuromorphic devices as an emerging direction relevant to TinyML, not as a quantified prediction of market adoption.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why packaging and boards were part of the forecast
Multi-die integration makes packaging and board-level constraints central to system design. IPC’s 2023 PCB Technology Trends study provides context: its biennial survey drew responses from 60 companies worldwide and asked about requirements and expectations through 2028. Respondents addressed density, signal integrity, manufacturing processes, business challenges, and environmental and compliance concerns.
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| IPC finding | What the figure describes |
|---|---|
| HDI usage/fabrication rose from 37.5% to just over 49% over five years | Change reported by IPC in 2023; the release describes the increase over the preceding five-year period. |
| 35% median HDI share; 50% median expected in five years | The first figure is the median reported at the time of the survey; the second is respondents’ expectation for five years later. |
| 71% identified thermal vias as their primary heat-dissipation method | Respondent-reported method in IPC’s 2023 study. |
| 60 companies worldwide | Number of companies contributing data to the study, as reported by IPC. |
IPC respondents also identified workforce training, competent personnel, yields, supply-chain lead times, engineering skills and regulation as challenges. These are survey responses, not proof that every company faced the same constraints. Together with the Siemens forecast’s emphasis on thermal, electrical, mechanical and test considerations, the IPC findings underscore why packaging advances depend on board and manufacturing capabilities as well as chip design.
What later industry indicators can—and cannot—show
Two later-published data points offer limited context, not a scorecard for the forecasts. EETech’s 2024 announcement about its 2023 Engineering Insights Report said the annual study received more than 10,000 qualified responses, including more than 400 engineers from Mainland China. In its summary, EETech said respondents identified simulation tools as the most crucial digital design tools manufacturers could provide, used AI predominantly in the conceptual design phase, and that approximately 23% rarely or never went outside an approved vendor list. These are findings as summarized by EETech; they should not be read as independently reproduced results or as proof that a particular forecast came true.
SEMI and the ESD Alliance reported that electronic system design revenue in Q4 2023 was $4,423 million, up 14% from Q3; the four-quarter moving average was up 14.1%. The categories include EDA, semiconductor IP and services, among others. The revenue figures describe that market segment and period; they do not establish adoption of multi-die systems, digital twins, 6G or any other specific technology in the issue.
Deloitte’s 2023 semiconductor outlook discussed localization, supply-chain diversification, data modernization and talent as planning issues. It anticipated a trillion-dollar semiconductor industry by 2030 and noted the geographic concentration of assembly and test. Those statements are Deloitte’s projections and framing, not current measured outcomes.
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The issue’s common thread was not a single breakthrough but a growing burden of integration: more complex packages and networks require stronger design verification, system-level testing, thermal and mechanical analysis, software quality and security work, and capable manufacturing and engineering teams. Its strongest near-term claims concerned work already underway—such as multi-die integration and 5G network evolution—while 6G, quantum applications and broader adoption of emerging approaches carried longer horizons or greater uncertainty.
Use the forecasts as a dated map of what contributors believed would matter in 2023. For decisions now, separate those expectations from measured adoption and current technical evidence, and evaluate each technology against its maturity, verification readiness, reliability and thermal demands, manufacturing and supply-chain availability, cost, workforce needs, and required test coverage.
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