March 23, 2011 — Conference organizers for The ConFab 2011, an exclusive invitation-only global conference and business meeting focused on semiconductor manufacturing, announced the session line-up and confirmed speakers. The event will be held May 15-18, 2011 at the M Resort Spa & Casino in Las Vegas, NV.
In 2011, the sessions include a look at the post-recession semiconductor industry, a closer focus on the relationship between fabless semiconductor companies and foundries, a review of the technical challenges the industry faces as it moves to the 22nm node and below, the status of the transition to 450mm wafers, and a look at high-growth markets in fields closely related to mainstream semiconductor manufacturing. The topics of the sessions at The ConFab 2011 are:
- Defining the New Semiconductor Landscape: A Post-recession Look at the State of the Industry
- Collaboration to Strengthen the IC Supply Chain
- The Challenges of Continued Scaling
- Bridging the Fabless-Foundry Gap (Panel Session)
- High Growth Markets: Challenges and Opportunities
Keynote talks will also address the impact of the disaster in Japan on semiconductor and related industries in Japan, and the ongoing effects on the world’s supply chain.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Bob Krakauer, CFO, Global Foundries;
- Bob Bruck, VP, Technology and Manufacturing Group GM, Intel;
- Harvey Frye. President, Tokyo Electron America (TEA);
- John Waite, Vice President Supply Chain, Global Foundries;
- Raj Pendse, VP, Product and Technology Marketing, STATS ChipPAC;
- Robert Darveaux, CTO, Amkor;
- Nick Yu, VP of Technology Development, Qualcomm;
- David Medeiros, Director of Patterning, IBM;
- Tom Jefferson, 450mm Program Manager, ISMI;
- B.J. Woo, Senior Director of Business Development, TSMC;
- Paul Farrar, VP, Albany Expansion and Strategic Initiatives, IBM
- Raj Jammy, VP Materials and Emerging Technologies, SEMATECH
- Ming-Yin Hao, VP of Field Application Engineering, UMC
- Bill McClean, President, IC Insights; and
- Mike Campbell, Senior VP of Engineering, Qualcomm
"Not only are we covering the semiconductor industry’s evolving economics and on-going technical challenges, but we’re tackling the issues collectively faced by fabless companies, foundries and packaging houses. We’re also going to look at some of today’s high growth market areas, including solid state lighting (high-brightness LEDs), micro electromechanical systems (MEMS), displays and energy storage," said Peter Singer, conference chair and Editor-in-Chief of Solid State Technology, who thanked the ConFab advisory board for its work creating the sessions.
Details of The Confab 2011 conference sessions:
Defining the New Semiconductor Landscape: a Post-recession Look at the State of the Industry
The session will cover the industry’s dramatic recovery in 2010 and a continued positive outlook for 2011 and 2012; the impact of consumerization, where almost 60% of semiconductor sales are driven by consumer demand; the restructuring of the industry that may leave only a handful of companies with the financial and technical resources to produce devices at the very leading edge; and the long term outlook for a maturing, yet-still-cyclical industry (cyclicality is a function of supply and demand, capacity, average selling price, and the high capital and operating costs of a fab).
Collaboration to Strengthen the IC Supply Chain
As the IC industry continues to scale to smaller dimensions and higher complexity chips – often called More Moore — we’ll face increased DPI (design/process interaction) and CPI (chip/packaging interaction) challenges. This will require stronger interactions among fabless, foundry and packaging companies. On the other hand, moving to “More than Moore” such as 3D TSV, we will see more integration issues including KGD (Known Good Die) on interposer or 3D stacking, wafer thinning/handling, and heterogeneous 2D or 3D integration of chips. The supply chain will become much more complicated as additional interfaces will have to be managed. Since our IC industry has long been divided into EDA or fab tool supplier, fabless, foundry and assembly/test companies, getting everyone work together and making profit for each party can be extremely challenging. This session is intended to explore various alternatives.
The Challenges of Continued Scaling
This session will look at critical technologies required to remain on the path defined by Moore’s Law. Presenters will emphasize the present status and cost of development, including next generation lithography (and the rise of computational lithography), the transition to 450mm wafers, which appears to be finally underway, and front-end issues related to transistor formation – most notably the use of high-k metal gates and strained silicon – and on-chip interconnects.
Panel Session: Bridging the Fabless-Foundry Gap
A key trend in the semiconductor industry is a shift from internal chip manufacturing capabilities to fabless and fab-lite or asset-lite models. Companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Broadcomm have seen great success by designing chips and outsourcing the manufacturing to foundries such as TSMC, UMC and Global Foundries. This move to fabless has been going on for some time, but what’s changed is that fabless companies are pushing foundries, as well and equipment and materials suppliers, to develop new capabilities to address their unique requirements. This panel session is designed to give fabless companies and foundries a forum to describe what they would like see developed and discuss how to better collaborate.
High Growth Markets: Challenges and Opportunities
Many companies are seeing tremendous growth in markets that are closely related to mainstream semiconductors, including solid state lighting (high brightness LEDs), MEMS, flexible displays and energy storage. This is true both on the part of semiconductor manufacturers/foundries and equipment and materials suppliers. This session will provide an analysis of key trends in each area.
The focus of each session was determined by The ConFab 2011 advisory board: David Bennett, Vice President, Strategic Manufacturing and Alliances, GLOBALFOUNDRIES; YW Park, VP, 300mm Technology team leader, Foundry Business Team 1, LSI Division, Samsung, Korea; John Chen, VP, Nvidia; John Lin, Director of Manufacturing Technology Center, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.; Paul Farrar, VP Semiconductor Process Development, IBM Corporation; Janice Golda, Director Lithography Capital Equipment Development, Intel; Kevin Logue, DMOS6 Engineering Manager, Texas Instruments; Sima Salamati, Engineering and Manufacturing Services and Consulting, ZYadS Inc., and Test Technology & Product Engineering Mgr., Texas Instruments (ret); Hans Stork, CTO, ON Semiconductor; Lori Nye, COO/Executive Director Customer Operations, Brewer Science; Paul Edstrom, CTO GE Commercial Finance; Ken Rygler, President, Rygler & Associates (founder of Toppan Photomasks); Takeshi Hattori, President, Hattori Consulting International; Bill Tobey, President, ACT International; Scott Kramer, Vice President of Manufacturing Technology, SEMATECH; and Pete Singer, Editor-in-Chief, Solid State Technology, and conference chair.
Entering its seventh year, The ConFab is an exclusive invitation-only global conference and business meeting where executives from semiconductor equipment and material suppliers can meet with key decision makers from semiconductor manufacturers. At The ConFab, these executives discuss business and technology issues and collaborate on future strategic development in device manufacturing. Ample time is available for private face-to-face meetings between equipment and material suppliers and manufacturers. Attendance is by invitation only and attendees are pre-screened to verify that they are key participants in the buying process.
The ConFab 2011 sponsors include these 19 leading industry organizations and suppliers:
Advantest, AG Semiconductor, Applied Materials, ATMI, Brewer Science, Camtek, Cascade Microtech, Edwards Vacuum Ltd., EVG, KLA-Tencor, Lam Research, Nikon, Novellus, Pall Microelectronics, Qcept Technologies, RED Equipment, SEMI, Toppan Photomasks and Valqua.
For sponsorship information, please contact JoAnn Pellegrini ([email protected]).
Presented by PennWell Corporation, a highly diversified media and information company, The ConFab builds upon the foundation of PennWell’s Electronics Media Group and its leading media brands: Solid State Technology, Advanced Packaging, Small Times, and Photovoltaics World.
Solid State Technology is the longest-standing and most complete source of information on semiconductor manufacturing, wafer fabrication, integrated circuits, thin-film microelectronics, flat-panel displays, and microstructure technologies, processes and equipment. Through its monthly print and digital magazines in North America and Asia, website (www.solid-state.com), web portal (www.ElectroIQ.com), e-newsletters and face-to-face events (The ConFab), Solid State Technology provides its global audience with in-depth technical analysis, authoritative commentary and up-to-the-minute news.
PennWell Corporation is a privately held and highly diversified business-to-business media and information company that provides quality content and integrated marketing solutions for the following industries in addition to fire and emergency services: Oil and gas, electric power generation and delivery, hydropower, renewable energy, water and wastewater treatment, waste management, electronics, semiconductor manufacturing, optoelectronics, fiberoptics, nanotechnology, aerospace and avionics, LEDS and lighting, and dental.
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