FutureCast 2026 — Part 1: When silicon becomes a living system
Holiday special edition of Bugged Out
Join host Harry Foster for a special holiday edition of Bugged Out. In this first episode of the two-part FutureCast 2026 series, Harry steps away from the usual guest interviews to look at how the semiconductor industry is evolving — and why innovation is now happening far above the transistor.
This episode explores why modern silicon behaves less like a static product and more like a living, continuously changing system. Harry highlights the technologies driving this shift, from multi-die architectures to software-defined hardware, and explains how verification must expand across the entire product lifecycle.
Key discussion points:
- Why innovation has moved above the transistor
- How chiplets, hybrid bonding, and HBM are redefining system performance
- The collapse of traditional design boundaries across logic, timing, thermals, and software
- Emerging system-level behaviors in multi-die architectures
- Why these changes reshape verification across physical and logical domains
- The role of hybrid digital twins in capturing system truth
- How software-defined products evolve after shipping
- Why OTA updates become verification events
- The shift from traditional to lifecycle-aware verification
- Predictions for 2026: multi-die verification becomes essential, and lifecycle-aware verification becomes mandatory for advanced AI-driven devices
- Predictions for 2030: hybrid digital twins become foundational, and early chiplet vendors enter the market with curated offerings
To dive deeper into these themes, you can also download the companion white paper https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/white-paper-the-future-of-semiconductors-engineering-in-the-convergence-era/
Bugged Out
Every chip has bugs — the real question is how fast you can find and fix them. Bugged Out is the bite-sized podcast where we shine a light on the art (and science) of functional verification.
In just 10–15 minutes per episode, host Harry Foster, Chief Scientist, Verification, Siemens EDA, sits down with leading innovators, engineers, and researchers to talk about what’s shaping the future of verification — from AI-driven tools to design-for-test, coverage closure, reliability, and more. Expect candid conversations, practical insights, and a few “war stories” from the trenches of debug.
Whether you’re a verification engineer, a design lead, or simply curious about how we “get the bugs out” of the chips that power our world, Bugged Out delivers focused, informative conversations designed to fit your busy schedule.
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