SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium, Half Moon Bay

Every January SEMI runs its Industry Strategy Symposium which is held at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay. This time it is January 11-14th. It is subtitled Riding the Wave of Silicon Magic.

I find it a fascinating event to attend. There is a lot of information to be had in the presentations, of course, but also a lot from talking to attendees. The semiconductor equipment vendors are on the sharp end of fab buildouts and they know what equipment is being ordered and what is being pushed out. Equivalently, the materials people indirectly know a lot about running fabs, since if a fab isn’t consuming much material (such as wafer blanks) then it is not making much product. Attending the symposium thus gives a great overview of the manufacturing landscape and also a good insight into future process developments and some color on the slowing down (or stopping) of Moore’s law.

As SEMI describes the conference:ISS 2015 explores the trends taking place in the industry from economic, market, technology, and manufacturing perspectives. In addition, the conference will look at ways to address the demands for continued development and manufacture of advanced technology. How should the supply chain respond to create increased value for customers, no matter where in the supply chain they reside? And most importantly, what should the industry do to maintain and increase prosperity to meet this demand in order to continue to sustain future growth? As always, the final goal is to help semiconductor industry executives set their strategies to navigate this exciting and rapidly changing environment.

There are two keynotes. Scott McGregor, the CEO of Broadcom and Charles Toups, VP of Development Program Excellence at Boeing.

The first day is divided up into two sessions. The first is Economic Trends with presentations from IHS, IDC, VLSI Research, Linx Consulting, and Stratfor. After lunch the session is Market Perspective with presentations from Samsung, Intel, Cisco, Gartner and CEA.

The first session on Tuesday isTechnology & Manufacturing, with presentations from TSMC, Altera, Intel, Honeywell, Micron, imec and ASE. The second session is Opportunities at the Edge with presentations from Lux Research and Illumina (and another tbd).

On Wednesday there is a presentation by McKinsey and then an executive panel session. It is moderated by Dan Hutcheson and the panelists are from Intel, JSR, TSMC and Qualcomm.

That is a pretty impressive list of speakers and companies, and for sure that anyone who attends will learn a huge amount. And if you have never been there, the Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay is in an incredible location right on the beach.

The full agenda for ISS is here. To register go here.

More articles by Paul McLellan…