Maheen Hamid is a co-founder of Breker Verification Systems, supplier of functional verification solutions for complex chip design challenges, and serves as its COO and CFO. She is also Co-Chair of the ESD Alliance and member of the SEMI North America Advisory Board (NAAB).
Given her background, roles within the industry and interests, it seemed like a good time for me to reach out for her perspective and market analysis. During our discussion, she offered up some great observations, identified trends, pointed to areas in need of attention and ways for the industry to better collaborate. We ended by talking about AI’s role today.
Smith: How do you track where the semiconductor industry is going?
Hamid: Business and macro strategies have always been interesting to me. In recent years, with the increasing global importance of silicon sovereignty, it is necessary to track the pulse of initiatives across various channels in multiple geographies. Starting with policy discussions at SEMI to media coverage of the semiconductor value chain to EDA specific news, I read voraciously and listen in on disparate discussions. There is no denying that it is impossible to envision the boundaries of where the semiconductor industry could go, particularly in design innovation.
Smith: Nonetheless, what trends have you identified?
Hamid: Global trade wars are creating as many roadblocks as they are creating opportunities. It is fascinating to watch the incredible innovation led by the U.S. for decades in semiconductor design be challenged as technology and access to technology gets democratized across the board. Maintaining thought leadership is a demanding task and no longer contained to an individual company’s cleverness. Crafting an effort that is coordinated with national interests has become compulsory.
Separately, developments in AI are creating a new wave of complex chip designs that are redefining hardware investments. Data centers are becoming as ubiquitous as the personal computers of the ‘80s.
While advanced chip designs forge ahead and additional classes of chips such as memory become truly commoditized, the need for efficiency in the full flow from design to manufacturing becomes imperative to protect margins for relevant players.
Smith: The need for industry collaboration appears to be a trend that is an essential part of the industry’s evolution. How do you see that developing in chip verification?
Hamid: RISC-V has given rise to many new design starts by companies that do not have the legacy verification frameworks owned by the NVIDIAs and Intels of the world. Several of these larger customer companies are investing heavily in their own complex chip designs, creating interesting opportunities for a collaborative approach to enabling internal innovations.
As well, this new class of customers is less married to enterprise flows from large EDA companies and prefer to invest in best-of-breed solutions. This is driving necessary collaborations across EDA vendors in chip verification. Driven by mutual customer demand, we have recently modified several of our arrangements with other EDA players.
Interestingly, the momentum in the RISC-V ecosystem is also driving new initiatives in the more traditional flows. This is a necessary shake-up in how business needs to be done in an increasingly, globally competitive landscape.
Smith: What area do you see that needs more attention?
Hamid: It is imperative to keep the business climate conducive for innovation and thought leadership. Policy debates impacting the chip industry are getting more heated and controversial. We need more concerted collaboration among the players in the chip ecosystem to help influence this policy in a way that allows U.S. companies to thrive. We need to promote more opportunities that bring disparate companies together to build clever flows that increase our silicon sovereignty.
Smith: AI is playing in the design and design tools area. What about other parts of an organization, such as finance or operations and marketing?
Hamid: AI efficiencies can help with predictive analysis for large companies in these core functions such as finance, operations and marketing, but for smaller, nimble companies, the human element still rules. Our strategic marketing, as an example, is defining industry-leading initiatives. AI does not have access to language models to automate any of what we need to invent in communicating new ideas. LLMs do provide a good sounding board though. It’s interesting to “discuss” ideas with ChatGPT and pull templates of successful implementations in unrelated industries that could be a blueprint for how we approach next steps.
About Maheen Hamid
Maheen Hamid is the co-founder CFO and COO at Breker Verification Systems, bringing a wealth of financial engineering experience from investment banking and small business management. Hamid has been instrumental in establishing Breker as an important stakeholder in the EDA industry, running its business side and driving operational growth as it thrives as an established software supplier. She plays an active role in defining the company’s strategic direction, corporate communications and branding. Hamid holds a BBA from North South University and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Robert (Bob) Smith is executive director of the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community.
