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Semiconductor council urges Canada to add silicon pillar to AI strategy
Canada's Semiconductor Council asks the federal government to add a hardware pillar to the national AI strategy, arguing sovereign AI needs sovereign silicon.
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An industry group has asked the federal government to add a seventh pillar to Canada's national AI strategy – one focused on semiconductors.
The Canada's Semiconductor Council (CSC), which represents nearly 60 domestic chip companies, submitted a position paper to the government titled "Sovereign AI Needs Sovereign Silicon." The paper praises the existing AI strategy but argues it misses a critical piece: the hardware layer.
"What's missing is that recognition that AI is built on hardware infrastructure, and what's underpinning everything there is semiconductors," CSC managing director Paul Slaby told BetaKit.
Slaby said the government's position that "no sovereign AI without sovereign compute" is correct. "But what we want to say is 'there's no solving compute without a domestic capability in semiconductors,'" he added.