07/16/2026
Yesterday at the SEMI Strategic Materials Conference, SkyWater SPV of Engineering Percy Gilbert shared a compelling perspective on what's next for computing: materials and manufacturability will define the next era of innovation.
He spoke about why device scaling alone is no longer enough, and why success in the next compute era will depend on turning emerging technologies such as quantum, photonics, and heterogeneous integration into manufacturable solutions.
A few key themes from Percy’s talk:
• Materials innovation is becoming the foundation of progress across semiconductors, AI, and quantum.
• The real bottleneck isn’t invention, it’s manufacturing readiness and supply‑chain resilience.
• Bridging the “Valley of Death” requires integrating R&D and manufacturing from day one.
• The next wave of performance gains will come from advanced integration and heterogeneous architectures.
We’re excited to be at the forefront, doing the hard work inside the fab, co‑developing processes, adapting tools, advancing materials, and helping emerging technologies reach manufacturable reality.