Silicon as a Service and its Economic Impact

Silicon as a Service (SiaaS) is a service model for serving hardware Silicon. For example, a CPU chip may have different capabilities to be offered as a service for pay per use consumption model or licensed activation model. Three major driving forces for SiaaS shift are “reducing entry barrier on cost”, “increasing flexibility on access”, and “prolonging life cycle on product.” Often, the products we buy are used occasionally, a great waste of both money and occupied space. More importantly, with the rapid growth of world population, product ownership by all is simply not sustainable for the limited resources and higher manufacturing cost. Sharing becomes a necessity. Furthermore, we value and celebrate our unique individuality. We have different interests and taste; hence we demand different kinds of services. The products we own can become obsolete and be rendered useless over time. Yet we want continuous service and stay up to date with all latest and greatest features [1]