The ConFab – an exclusive conference and networking event for semiconductor manufacturing and design executives from leading device makers, OEMs, OSATs, fabs, suppliers and fabless/design companies – announces a preliminary list of speakers for the May 14-17 event being held at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
The ConFab 2019 is excited to welcome these distinguished speakers:
- Jeff Welser, Vice President and Lab Director, IBM Research – Almaden
- Martin Fink, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Western Digital
- Stephen S. Pawlowski, Vice President, Advanced Computing Solutions, Micron Technology, Inc.
- Dave Roach, Senior Vice President – Worldwide Manufacturing Operations, Western Digital
- John Chen, Vice President, Technology and Foundry Operations, Nvidia
- Sagar Pushpala, Vice President, Business Development – Specialty Technologies, TSMC
- Steve Teig, Chief Technology Officer, Xperi Corp.
- Dan Armbrust, CEO and co-founder, Silicon Catalyst
- Ren Wu, Founder and CEO, Novumind
- Alissa Fitzgerald, Founder and Managing Member, A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates
- Len Jelinek, Senior Director, Semiconductor Manufacturing, IHS Markit
- Weston Twigg, Senior Research Analyst and Principal, Pacific Crest
We’ll start off with our usual “big picture” session, focusing on the hottest areas for semiconductor growth in the coming years: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, automotive, cloud computing, the IoT, 5G, virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR), smart cities and healthcare. Speakers will discuss how these and other applications will challenge the semiconductor industry in new and different ways in the near future.
This is especially true in the case of AI, which we’ll explore in the second session, focusing it is ushering in a new era for semiconductor devices that will bring many new opportunities but also many challenges. AI needs innovation in the edge and in the cloud, in generating data on the edge, storing the data, and processing that data to unlock the value. At the same time Moore’s Law is slowing. AI’s potential market of hundreds of zettabytes and trillions of dollars relies on new semiconductor architectures and compute platforms. Making these AI semiconductor engines will require a wildly innovative range of new materials, equipment, and design methodologies.
The semiconductor industry will continue to drive microprocessors and memory technology forward, although perhaps at a slower pace defined by Moore’s Law. An equally important trend known as “More than Moore (MtM)” devices, where added value to devices is provided by incorporating functionalities that do not necessarily scale according to “Moore’s Law“. These devices include MEMS, silicon photonics and biosensors. We’ll be delving into that in Thursday morning’s session.
I’m particularly excited about Thursday afternoon’s panel discussion “Detect the Undectables, In-line Inspection and Diagnosis for sub-10nm IC Fab Processes.” he end of Moore’s law has brought challenges in advancing IC technologies with economical benefits. The cost of transistors don’t naturally go down with scaling. Meanwhile, the exploration of AI/Deep Learning demands more transistors on a chip and we must find ways to continue the journey that we have all enjoyed for the past 50 years.
There are in fact only few ways to continue reducing die cost with the yield improvement being the most profound way for which we can all contribute and enjoy the benefit. Yield, and to some extent reliability, depends on defect density. Not only defect counts need to come down faster than ever, the tiny-size defects which didn’t matter before are now killing our dice. Detecting and eliminating the defects are one of the most important tasks in our lives.
On Friday, leading analysts and economists will give their perspectives on global market trends.
This is a preliminary agenda – stay tuned for announcements on additional sessions and speakers at www.theconfab.com.
To inquire about participating – if you represent an equipment, material or service supplier, contact Kerry Hoffman, Director of Sales, at khoffman@extensionmedia.com. To inquire about attending, contact Sally Bixby, Sr. Events Director at sbixby@extensionmedia.com. I hope you can join us!