Chip trade honors ex-Cadence CEO and VC Lip-Bu Tan

The Semiconductor Industry Association awarded its highest honor to Lip-Bu Tan, the previous CEO of Cadence Design Systems and the founding father of the enterprise capital agency Walden International.

Tan served as CEO of Cadence, a maker of chip design instruments and simulation software program, for 13 years. And in 1987, he based Walden International. At that point, no person wished to spend money on semiconductor firms as chip making was getting so costly.

Over the years, he invested in 85 semiconductor firms. Of these, 26 had been acquired and 19 went public. Almost nobody has that type of funding document. One of these firms, Credo Technology, went public earlier in mid-February, elevating $230 million at a price of $1.6 billion.

Tan was there together with his spouse, two kids, and their grandchildren as he accepted the award. CEOs Pat Gelsinger of Intel, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and Matt Murphy of Marvell sang his praises and Tan mentioned it was humbling. He remembered again to the times when he took over Cadence, hoping it will be a three-month gig. He needed to apologize to clients and buyers who had felt deceived by Cadence’s former chief. And he answered emails on learn how to repair Cadence, generally getting 300 of them a day from his personal workers.

Tan stayed at Cadence for 13 years and oversaw its market worth change from lower than $1 billion when he took over to $45 billion when he retired in 2021. And as an investor, Tan made it to the Midas List of Forbes.

“Great renaissance leaders were so skilled across so many dimensions,” Gelsinger mentioned in presenting the award. “Lip-Bu Tan is that type of particular person. But whereas they weren’t preferred, Lip-Bu Tan is beloved by all people and he is aware of all people. I couldn’t consider anyone extra worthy of the Robert N. Noyce Award than my pal Lip-Bu Tan.

The Walden agency was named after Henry David Thoreau’s e-book, Walden, as Tan believed in comparable issues, like self-reliance, mentioned Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvell.

Tan mentioned he was honored and humbled. He famous he didn’t end his doctorate in nuclear engineering at MIT, as Three Mile Island modified his profession path. Chips had been unpopular too, however he doubled down and tripled on them, he mentioned. He mentioned he obtained just a few “CEO for Dummies” books when he was named Cadence’s chief as a first-time CEO, and he learn all of them.

He mentioned he stays fascinated with applied sciences resembling quantum computing, hyperscale servers, huge information processing, and superior packaging. He believes all of them have the potential to rework the lives of people on this planet.

And he quoted Noyce, the cofounder of Intel, who famously mentioned, “Don’t be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful.”

“Semiconductors have become very strategic for the country and very important for the whole world,” Tan mentioned in an interview with me this summer season. “President Biden has brought up chip wafers and this chip act is very important for the country and the world.”

In our interview, Tan mentioned he was involved about local weather change and enthusiastic about investments in AI and different applied sciences. Even as Credo went public, he noticed robust occasions even again in July once we talked.

As for the chip trade cycle, he famous that the bull run in semiconductors has gone on for a very long time. Now that smartphones have hit an enormous put in base, gross sales might decelerate and there may very well be softness in the long run marketplace for chips. He mentioned he can see the market slowing down in 2022 or 2023. But he believes that it may bounce again by 2024.

“I think the next two years will be challenging,” Tan mentioned, due to points resembling inflation and supply-chain points. “The other part is the geopolitical risk. This relates to energy and political tensions.”

And in the long run, he’s involved that progress in chip design may additionally decelerate because the chip trade hits the bounds of Moore’s Law, the prediction that chip capability would double each couple of years. Good relationships with companions in digital design automation and foundries have change into vital. Credo is a detailed companion for contract chip producer TSMC.

“It is more tricky to add performance,” he mentioned. “With respect to Credo, there is no need to push the advanced manufacturing technology. They have a huge advantage in design. With Moore’s Law slowing down, you need to do chiplets and clever packaging and that is why Credo saw the chiplet as the right way to go.”