It is that time of the year again: our annual Legends of Semiconductors dinner, hosted as always at our home. This year, we were treated to an omakase prepared by private chef Cho San.

This year, 17 engineers gathered around the table. We all have one thing in common. We either studied semiconductors as electrical engineers, built our careers in the semiconductor industry, or, as was true for most of us, both.

In one way or another, silicon brought us together.

For one evening every year, we celebrate not just an industry, but a lineage.

We have one tradition that never changes. Instead of introducing ourselves by our companies or job titles, everyone starts by sharing which edition of Sedra & Smith they studied from.

Benny Lau and Lee Lau were zero edition. They learned directly from Professor Adel Sedra’s class notes before those notes became a world-class textbook used by generations of electrical engineers. Martin Snelgrove completed his PhD under Professor Sedra and later became his colleague. Professor Tony Chan Carusone, another former student, co-authored the eighth edition and is now writing the ninth with Vincent Gaudet. I am second edition and had the privilege of being one of Professor Sedra’s students.

Looking around the table, it struck me that much of the story of Canada’s semiconductor industry can almost be told through one professor, one textbook, and several generations of students.

This year, Professor Sedra joined us as our guest of honour again.

We were also joined by Benny Lau and Lee Lau, co-founders of ATI. Long before GPUs became one of the world’s most strategic technologies, ATI pioneered the graphics chip industry and became the world’s largest graphics chip company. Sorry, NVIDIA, but before ATI was acquired by AMD nearly 20 years ago, ATI was bigger and better!

Even today, many of AMD’s GPUs continue to come from Toronto.

ATI’s influence was visible all around the table. In addition to Benny and Lee, Eva Lau, Jim Seto (CEO of ePIC), Hugh Chow (CEO of ventureLAB), and Amy Lau (now at Hepzibah AI) all worked at ATI. Six of the 17 people around the table were ATI alumni. ATI’s fingerprints are everywhere in Canada’s semiconductor ecosystem.

The next generation of Canadian semiconductor companies was equally well represented.

We had Professor Tony Chan Carusone, former CTO of Alphawave, before its acquisition by Qualcomm for US$2.4 billion.

We also had Nish Sinnadurai, Senior Vice President of Core Software and General Manager, and Val Manohararajah, Chief Product Architect of Cerebras. Cerebras needs no introduction and recently completed one of the biggest technology IPOs in the world this year.

Around the table were also Martin Snelgrove and Raymond Chik of Hepzibah AI, Gem Shoute of Zinite, Niraj Mathur of Blumind, and Professor Joyce Poon of Axiomatic AI. Together, the group spanned multiple generations of Canadian leadership in semiconductors, AI computing, photonics, and other advanced computing systems.

What makes this dinner special is not only who is around the table. It is the conversations that become possible when this particular group comes together.

We talked about the convergence of hardware and software as AI dissolves the traditional boundary between the two. We also discussed why the next bottleneck in AI is all about data movement, not simply computation. Moving data between memory and processors, across chips, and throughout entire systems often consumes more time and energy than the computation itself. Addressing this bottleneck will require innovation across the entire computing stack.

And, of course, we heard insider stories from decades of building the semiconductor industry, including never-before-publicly-shared conversations with TSMC founder Morris Chang. These were not simply historical anecdotes. They offered firsthand lessons on building world-class technology companies, forging enduring partnerships, and navigating industry shifts.

These are conversations that could only happen around this table.

Every year, I leave this dinner with the same feeling.

Canada has been producing world-class semiconductor talent and companies for decades. The people around this table have built category-defining companies, trained generations of engineers, and are now creating the next wave of breakthrough technologies.

The future of semiconductors is being written around the world. Canada has already written some remarkable chapters, and judging by the people around this table, many more are still to come.

In fact, some of the world’s best next-generation semiconductor companies are already being built in research labs and startups across Canada. We are seeing it firsthand. Most people simply have not heard of them yet.

Two Small Fish Ventures is already backing some of these companies and will continue to support the best founders at the earliest stages. We are working hard to ensure that this remarkable Canadian semiconductor lineage not only continues, but becomes even stronger.