Joachim Kunkel

Arteris, USA

The Mature Node Semiconductor Landscape

Abstract

Since the United States restricted the export to China of EDA software specially designed for the development of integrated circuits (ICs) with in Gate-All-Around (“GAA”) FET structures on August 12, 2022, the public awareness regarding the strategic nature of ICs in ‘advanced node’ semiconductor process technologies, i.e., semiconductor process technologies in geometries of 16/14nm or less, has only intensified.

In January 2, 2024, after pressure by the United States administration, ASML was ordered by the Dutch government to restrict shipment of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment to China, with the objective of preventing Chinese semiconductor companies to manufacture ICs in geometries smaller than 7nm. And on December 2, 2024 the United States added export restrictions for ICs in nonplanar transistor architecture or in geometries of 16/14nm or less.

All the while, hardly any public attention was given to so called ‘mature node’ semiconductor process technologies, i.e., planar transistor architectures in geometries of 28nm and larger, despite China building out large ‘mature node’ semiconductor manufacturing capacity.  Until in May 2025 the United States tightened the August 12, 2022 export restrictions, expanding them to all process technologies.

This talk will explore the current state of mature node semiconductor markets and discuss potential paths into the future.

Biography

Mr. Kunkel is an industry leader with three decades of experience at Synopsys where he most recently served as the General Manager of Synopsys’ Intellectual Property (IP) business unit through the end of 2024. In this role, he built the Synopsys IP business and grew Synopsys’ IP revenue to over $1.9B in fiscal year 2024, making Synopsys the industry’s second-largest IP provider and the largest provider of Foundation IP and Interface IP.  While at Synopsys Joachim also laid the foundation for Synopsys’ virtual prototyping and FPGA-based prototyping businesses.

Before joining Synopsys in 1994, Joachim was a co-founder of CADIS GmbH in Aachen, Germany. There, he served as Managing Director and performed various duties in engineering, sales, and marketing.

Before co-founding CADIS he was a research assistant at the Aachen University of Technology, where he conducted research in system-level simulation techniques for digital signal processing, with special emphasis on parallel computing. Joachim holds an M.S.E.E. degree, the Dipl.-Ing. der Nachrichtentechnik, from the Aachen University of Technology.

Mr. Kunkel has served as a member of the board of directors of Arteris, Inc. since September 2024.

Download