It has been a busy month in electronics. Ray Sharpe, chief executive of the Electronics Division, resigned from Franklin, Mass.-based Cookson Group after 9 years with the company to take another position outside the company. When I talked to him about the change, he said, “It shows confidence that the economy is doing well when people see opportunities elsewhere.”
He may be right. Markets are up. According to SEMI, wafer shipments set records in the first quarter of 2004. Worldwide silicon wafer-area shipments rose 9 percent in the first quarter from the previous one and 29 percent from the first quarter of 2003, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group.
(June 29, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—SEMICON West 2004, the largest exposition in North America for the semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing industry, will feature keynote presentations by industry leaders such as Paolo Gargini of Intel, Steven Appleton of Micron, Aart de Geus of Synopsys and Bruce Freyman of Amkor. It will also include focused panel discussions among technology experts and other programs designed to facilitate information exchange between the global IC community and their manufacturing technology providers.