Trends predicted to shape 2021’s tech industry
From the application of thirdgeneration semiconductor materials, AI-driven R&D of medicines and vaccines, to automatic optimisation of data management system and data intelligence-powered agriculture, technology breakthroughs are expected to accelerate and make impacts across sectors in the economy and the society at large.
Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, the global research initiative by Alibaba Group, provides its forecast of the top leading trends that will shape the tech industry in the year ahead. The application of thirdgeneration semiconductor materials, represented by GaN and SiC, will expand to new industries.
Third-generation semiconductor materials, represented by gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC), boast high temperature resistance, high breakdown voltage, high frequency, high power, and high radiation resistance. However, for a long time, the application of these materials has been limited only to a narrow scope of fields due to their complex processing methods and high costs. In recent years, breakthroughs in material growth and device fabrication have helped reduce the costs of third-generation semiconductor materials, making a wider range of application possible. Quantum error correction and practical utility of quantum computing will be the top priority of the "post-quantum-supremacy" era.
The year 2020 is the first year to pass after quantum supremacy was achieved. In 2020, investors worldwide flocked to the quantum computing field, related technologies and ecosystems thrived, and numerous quantum computing platforms rose to prominence. In 2021, this trend will garner further attention from all corners of society. Quantum computing must deliver enough value to make it worthwhile. The mission in the "post-quantum-supremacy" era must be aligned across the industry: to tackle critical scientific and engineering problems through collaborative innovation and to pave the way for quantum error correction and practical utility, two milestones in quantum computing. Breakthroughs in carbonbased materials will stimulate growth of flexible electronics.
Flexible electronics deliver stable performance even after mechanical deformations such as bending, folding, and stretching. They are preferred in wearable devices, electronic skins, and flexible screens. In the past, flexible materials were simply not flexible enough or could not compete with rigid siliconbased materials in terms of electrical characteristics, which limited their commercial use. In recent years, groundbreaking developments in carbon-based materials have allowed flexible electronics to go far beyond their previous capabilities. AI accelerates the R&D of medicines and vaccines.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been widely adopted to interpret medical images and manage medical records while its application in vaccine development and the clinical research of drugs is still in the pilot stage.
As new AI algorithms are emerging and computing power is reaching new heights, this technology will make it easier to complete R&D of medicines and vaccines that were previously very time-consuming and costly.
Compound screening, disease model generation, target identification, lead compound discovery, and lead drug optimisation are some of the areas in which the technology excels. Brain– computer interface technology allows us to go beyond the limits of the human body.
Braincomputer interface technology is essential for newgeneration humanmachine interactions and collaborative intelligence between humans and machines. Data processing will become autonomous and selfevolving.
The rapid development of cloud computing and exponential growth in the amount of data have posed daunting challenges to computing task processing, storage cost control, and cluster management during traditional data processing.
Manual management and tuning are unable to process massive amounts of data in diversified, complicated scenarios.
Therefore, AI-based automatic optimisation of data management system will inevitably be the best choice for future data processing. Cloud-native technologies will reshape IT systems.
Long product development cycles and low R&D efficiency in traditional software development have long been a source of pain.
Cloud-native architectures featuring distribution, scalability, and flexibility look to be the cure. They allow enterprises to utilise and manage their heterogenous hardware devices and cloud computing resources more effectively.