Event Abstracts

Perspectives on the Emerging Semiconductor Marketplace
Ms. Lisa Tafoya, Vice President of Global Research, GSA

With the automotive sector slowed to a sputtering crawl, PCs running out of desks and consumer electronics spending more or less eliminated form household budgets, 2009 is will be a severely tough year of contraction after a long run of expansion.   As a result, semiconductor companies must look for new areas of opportunity.  The next killer app may be a combination of markets that in the past have not received a huge amount of attention. To address survival mode, companies will need to investigate opportunities for growth in areas such as industrial control, home automation and network control, medical sector advances, power-saving/harvesting applications. Technology will continue to advance, but much of the current technology is applicable to innovation to enable emerging opportunities for microelectronics. 

Emerging Technologies For Integrated Circuit Fabrication
Dr. Stanley Wolf, President of Lattice Press

Silicon integrated circuits have been manufactured since their invention on the early 1960s. Advances in IC fabrication for the first 50 years relied on scaling devices and working with a small number of materials (silicon, silicon dioxide, aluminum). Today, scaling limits have been reached using this  limited number of materials. To advance IC fabrication in the future, it will be necessary to use novel techniques (such as “strained-silicon,” “double-patterning,” “gate last,” SOI, FINFETS, and carbon nanotubes) as well as many new materials (such as copper, hafnium, nickel, germanium, etc.). This talk will survey these topics and show the directions that IC manufacturing will follow in the next decade.

Adapt to Thrive from Today’s Economic Turmoil – A Fabless Company Perspective
Dr. Roawen Chen, Vice President and General Manager, Marvell Semiconductor

This unprecedented severe economic downturn will put fabless and foundry industry, a young industry thrive over the last 15 years, a true test to its fundamental business model. Although the near-term economic picture remains gloomy, fabless companies, especially a few big ones with strong cash position and debt-free, should remain fundamentally strong. Nonetheless, we believed that this economic downturn also provoke bigger structure changes for our industry, some inevitable architectural convergence coming in the markets we serve. Recent buzz terms in Financial or Automobile industry, such as “consolidation”, “nationalization”,” credit-contraction”, “bail-out” will not be a remote similarity in semiconductor industry.  Those who fail to adapt will find it increasingly difficult to compete and thrive in this prolonged downturn. In this 30-minutes presentation, we attempt to layout the challenges and opportunities facing in today’s economic agitation, both from hopeful and realistic views.

Advanced Methodologies Present New Opportunities for Chinese IC design

Dr. Charlie Huang, Senior Vice President, Chief Strategic Officer and acting Chief Technical Officer of Cadence

Because the number of ICs consumed in China far exceeds the number designed there, a strong push to increase the "locally-designed content" of products manufactured in China will continue. A good way to accomplish this is to target domestic and emerging markets where Chinese companies have a distinctive advantage in understanding system requirements. The ever-increasing level of IC design skills and experience in China will help win designs for those markets, but successful design also requires a solid design methodology based on world-class design tools.

For many years, chip companies have enjoyed consistent progress as process nodes have scaled downwards with few changes in design methodology. Now that scaling to new process nodes is becoming more difficult, companies will need to invest more in new design methodologies and technology. This disruption is an opportunity for new and agile chip companies to take market share from established ones. Innovations in many areas like system-level design, advanced verification, hierarchical design, 3-D silicon, and IC/package co-design provide opportunities to leapfrog incumbents in rapid-growth markets. Companies that don't take advantage of this opportunity will trail further behind the incumbents.

Perspectives from Foundry - Shining with Partners in the Dark Age
Mr. Sunny Hui, President of GSMC North America

The recent gloomy economy has casted a new layer of shadow on top of the already slowing down semiconductor industry since the beginning of this millennium. Growing competition in selected sectors has gone beyond its own self-regulatory and generated disastrous results like in DRAM and FLASH. Even in the traditional areas such as computing, communication and consumer markets, intensifying competition is inevitable due to convergence of the application nature. Sources of funding are tightening as venture capitalists, private equities and bankers become more cautious than ever. Facing this global perfect storm, across IDM and Fabless, from top executives to work levels, it is easy to get confused while trying to reach out for the silver lining. This talk will surround the new role foundries might take to optimize the contribution into this semiconductor industry rejuvenation journey.

Future of the Semiconductor Model- The hockey stick--friend or foe?
Mr. John La Bouff, Senior Manager Deloitte Consulting LLP

Amidst the current global recession, the semiconductor industry has a rare opportunity to kill the quarter-end “hockey stick” and significantly upgrade their supply chain performance—learn about opportunities to enhance customer service, reduce working capital requirements and stabilize pricing with an enhanced understanding of what “linearity” really means.