ISMI Symposium

This past week Austin has experienced another annual ISMI symposium at Hilton Airport hotel. Many members of semiconductor industry came to the city to share their work and create new networking opportunities. While there were short courses and pre-symposium events on Monday and Sunday, main presentations and panels were held on Wednesday and Thursday.

I had a chance to make an half-an-hour simulation demonstration in a simulation short course on Tuesday. It was just about showing how an AutoSched AP model looks like for people who are unfamiliar with it. AutoSched AP is probably one of the most widely used simulation packages in the semiconductor industry. It all started for automation industry but developed in semiconductor business by Brooks company and now is being supported by AMAT after Brook's acquisition to the company. It has a spreadsheet user interface without any graphical fancy stuff as opposed to other simulation packages such as Automod or Arena, but is the fastest and to run for semiconductor manufacturing. It has flexibility for customization by some knowledge of C++ coding for people who are not happy with its standard properties and extensions. It may not be the ideally fastest simulation package but is accepted as one of the best around for semiconductor manufacturing until a better ones come into competition.

On Thursday, I have been to a panel on the futur of semiconductor manufacturing in G7 countries, which was directed by Don Hutcheson of VLSI, by the participation of expert people of semiconductor industry. To summarise, panelists foresee that it is going to survive in G7 countries one way or another. While Asian countries are serious competitors for G7 countries, due to unique characteristics of semiconductor manufacturing (low labor, high investment requirements, etc.) they do not hold a greater threat in the future. One of the most important ways to hold semiconductor manufacturing profitable in G7 countries is government subsidies. Also, new technologies promise great opportunities ahead for semiconductor industry, such as solar and led.

I forgot to say that the food was good, too. I especially liked the vegetable lasagna served for lunch on Thursday.

Science 2.0

Last Tuesday (October 23, 2008), I attended a talk by Don Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research Inc., which is hosted by Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law in LBJ Library of University of Texas at Austin. Hutcheson, and his small but effective company VLSI serves as a big database for semiconductor industry. The title of the talk was "Science 2.0: Globalized Innovation in Electronics".

Science 2.0 is about applying principles of Web 2.0 to scientific research. Having presented transistors to public use and henceforth made the Internet available to world's rapidly globalizing communication and sharing needs, apparently semiconductor industry itself does not utilize it for its own benefit by the means of research and innovation as much as expected. Especially, research conducted in corporate labs have a very highly probable chance of staying in corporate's library shelves for years and nobody would hear of it for ages. As Web 2.0 applications are all about interaction, Science 2.0 model enables people share their research, innovations through web. Those days are not very far that people will work from their home using communication tools (video conferences, phone conferences, Internet, etc.) via sharing virtual offices.

The future of semiconductor industry lies in research and innovation. Sharing information, interaction of minds and collaboration will bring high quality and effective solutions. You can see Don Hutcheson's efforts in Science 2.0 at weSRCH.com.

It was not really clear to me how Science 2.0 reflects on manufacturing other than design but Hutcheson said he was going to give a talk on this subject in another conference soon. I am looking forward to learning about it afterwards.