An industry group is asking the federal government to create a seventh pillar in the national AI strategy to support Canada’s semiconductor industry.
The news: Canada’s Semiconductor Council (CSC), which represents almost 60 Canadian semiconductor companies, has submitted a position paper to the federal government titled Sovereign AI Needs Sovereign Silicon.
The position paper broadly praises the government’s AI strategy, but argues it’s missing a key piece. It suggests that scoping out a semiconductor-focused pillar would give Canada’s semiconductor industry “a clear place to plug in” to the strategy with no need for additional funding programs by doing things like setting targets and directing procurement and capital.
From the source: CSC managing director Paul Slaby told BetaKit that there are lots of positives in the strategy, “but what’s missing is that recognition that AI is built on hardware infrastructure, and what’s underpinning everything there is semiconductors.”
“The government position is correct, in terms of ‘no sovereign AI without sovereign compute,’ but what we want to say is ‘there’s no solving compute without a domestic capability in semiconductors,’” he added. Slaby said that the position paper has already been submitted to the government and received a “very positive response” from the deputy minister of AI, Mark Schaan, which he hopes opens a door for a discussion he’s feeling optimistic about.
Following the thread: As Canada builds out its sovereign compute capability with data centres on home soil, those facilities tend to run on foreign-made chips.
The CSC’s position paper puts forward five asks to improve Canada’s domestic choices on the hardware side, including a Canadian-content plan for the sovereign compute buildout, appending hardware on-ramps for some of the programs established in the AI strategy, and adding semiconductor talent to the strategy’s AI workforce policies.
Final thought: Industry leaders, including the CSC, have long asked the government to carve out a national semiconductor strategy. However, AI Minister Evan Solomon told BetaKit in May that he is not pursuing a standalone strategy, so folding semiconductors into the national AI strategy may be the next best option.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Alexandre Debiève.