In this episode, Uzair talks to Dr. Naveed Sherwani about the global semiconductor industry, how geopolitics is affecting what is an extremely interconnected supply chain, and Pakistan’s potential in this space.

Dr. Naveed Sherwani is Chairman, President, and CEO of Rapid Silicon, which was launched in 2021. Rapid Silicon’s goal is to promote, adopt and implement open source tech to address the low- to mid-range FPGA market. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), or integrated circuits sold off-the-shelf.

He is a well-known semiconductor industry veteran with over 35 years of entrepreneurial, engineering, and management experience. He is widely recognized as an innovator and leader in the field of design automation of ASICs and microprocessors.

Dr. Sherwani has founded or co-founded over fifteen silicon companies including Intel

Microelectronics Services, Open-Silicon, and others. The companies collectively have a valuation of over $4.5B.

Reading Recommendations:

- Talent is overrated by Geoffrey Colvin

- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction

1:30 State of the global semiconductor ecosystem

13:50 US-China competition

30:00 Pakistan’s potential in this space

40:10 Ongoing developments in Pakistan’s ecosystem

54:35 Reading recommendations

You can read the semiconductor plan here - https://paklaunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Pakistan-National-Semiconductor-Plan-PNSP-1.pdf