Pete Singer is delighted to announce the keynotes and other speakers for The ConFab 2015, to be held May 19-22 at The Encore at The Wynn in Las Vegas. The line-up includes Ali Sebt, President and CEO of Renesas America, Paolo Gargini, Chairman of the ITRS and Subramani Kengeri, Vice President, Global Design Solutions at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.
Mark Simmons, Product Marketing Manager, Calibre Manufacturing Group, Mentor Graphics writes about cutting fab costs and turn-around time with smart, automated resource management. He notes that the competition for market share is brutal for both the pure-play and independent device manufacturer (IDM) foundries. Success involves tuning a lot of knobs and dials. One of the important knobs is the ability to continually meet or exceed aggressive time-to-market schedules.
Paul Stockman, Commercialization Manager, Linde Electronics blogs that there is an increasing demand for and focus on sustainable manufacturing that will contribute to a greening of semiconductors. This greening must be robust and responsive to change and cannot constrain the individual processes or operation of a fab.
Applied Materials’ Max McDaniel writes on the quest for more durable displays. He says the same innovators who created such amazingly thin, light and highly functional smartphones (with the help of Applied Materials display technology) are already developing durability improvements that may eliminate the need for protective covers.
Batteries? We don’t need no stinking batteries, says Ed Korczynski. We’re still used to thinking that low-power chips for “mobile” or “Internet-of-Things (IoT)” applications will be battery powered…but the near ubiquity of lithium-ion cells powering batteries could be threatened by capacitors and energy-harvesting circuits connected to photovoltaic/thermoelectric/piezoelectric micro-power sources.
With the 2015 SPIE Advanced Lithography (AL) conference around the corner, some people have asked me what remaining EUVL challenges need to be addressed to ensure it will be ready for mass production later this year or next. Vivek Bakshi of EUV Litho, Inc. provides thoughts on this topic and what he expects to hear at the conference.
Phil Garrou continues his look at presentations from the Grenoble SEMI 3D Summit which took place in January, focusing on an interesting presentation by ATREG consultants on the future of Assembly & Test.
On Tuesday, January 20, President Obama once again stood before a joint session of Congress to deliver a State of the Union Address. With the newly seated Republican-controlled Congress and his Cabinet present, the President discussed topics ranging from the current state of the economy to foreign affairs and his ideas on how to move the nation forward. Jamie Girard of SEMI was pleased to hear that the President supported multiple policy goals including expansion of free trade, corporate tax reform, support for basic science research and development and others.
