Busy Month Ahead for SEMI

Stanley T. Myers, President Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) -- Semiconductor International, 9/1/1999

The equipment and materials industry always seems to take a breather in August following the busy time surrounding SEMICON West. Now the pace quickens again in September, with a calendar full of SEMI events around the world.

ASMC set for Boston

The 10th annual Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference and Workshop is set for Sept. 8-10 in Boston. Co-sponsored by IEEE and SEMI, this has become the most respected manufacturing conference in the semiconductor industry.

The ASMC program includes more than 90 papers organized into 14 sessions on current topics such as copper and advanced interconnect, advanced etch/clean processes, and new challenges in photolithography. Keynote speakers include Clark Fuhs, vice president and director of the Semiconductor Manufacturing Analysis Group at Dataquest, and Doug Grose, vice president of strategy and development at IBM.

Special ASMC features this year are a SEMATECH meeting to review the 1999 ITRS Defect Technology Section and a panel discussion on the transition to 0.18 mm design rules.

FPD Expo in Korea

FPD Expo Korea, Sept. 14-16, is that country's only exposition and technical conference dedicated to electronic displays. While virtually every display technology is represented, the sessions on liquid crystal displays are of particular interest, since Korea represents some 22% of the worldwide LCD market.

Product exhibits in Seoul represent both manufacturers of displays and suppliers to them. The technical conference focuses on the technology of display manufacturing, but there also is a business conference that includes a strategic analysis of the global display market.

Foundries drive Taiwan growth

The success of the foundry model, pioneered and globalized by the Taiwanese, is continuing to propel growth in this important market, the site of another sold-out SEMICON Taiwan, Sept. 15-17 in Taipei. According to ERSO/ITRI projections, Taiwan is expected to invest more than US $60B in semiconductor technology over the next 10 years. Semiconductor revenues in Taiwan totaled US $8.4B last year and are expected to grow to US $43B by 2005.

Not only is this a bustling event on the exposition floor, with some 600 primary and co-exhibitors; it also features a technical program, thanks to the SEMI Taiwan Advisory Board, comprised of executives from our member companies as well as the country's leading semiconductor producers. I particularly want to thank SEMI board member David Wang of Applied Materials for chairing this new board and for the active role he has played in securing world-class speakers for this event.

SEMI version of CSI debuts

With the growing importance of packaging and assembly in semiconductor manufacturing, SEMI has vastly increased its activities in these areas. This includes acquiring Chip Scale International (CSI) earlier this year and totally redeveloping the technical program. The results can be seen Sept. 13-16 when SEMI's CSI takes place at the San Jose Convention Center.

Available for distribution at CSI will be an important new packaging technology roadmap developed in Japan by the Japanese Institute of Electronic Packing (JIEP), completed in June of this year. SEMI has agreed to underwrite the translation of this 200-page document into English for initial distribution at CSI.

This is the first time a Japanese technology roadmap of this magnitude has been translated and shared with the rest of the world, and you may be certain it will have great impact on many of the discussions and meetings taking place at CSI. Entitled 'Technology Roadmap for Electronic Packaging and Assembly in 2010,' this is a comprehensive view of the future as seen by Japan's leading semiconductor companies.

The JIEP roadmap is only one of the new developments helping make Chip Scale International SEMI's most important effort to date to focus on packaging challenges. CSI 99 will be held jointly with SMTA International, sponsored by the Surface Mount Technology Association.

SEMI Awards Dinner closes the month

The annual SEMI Awards Dinner and Forecast will cap off the month on Sept. 30 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif. The keynote speaker will be Wilfred Corrigan, chairman and CEO of LSI Logic.

This popular annual event will include presentation of the SEMI Awards for North America and industry forecasts from Jay Deahna and Mark Edelstone of Morgan Stanley.