Managing the New Economics 
of Semiconductor Manufacturing
The ConFab 2011 Conference Overview

In 2011, the sessions include a look at the post-recession semiconductor industry, a closer focus on the relationship between fabless semiconductor companies and foundries, a review of the technical challenges the industry faces as it moves to the 22 nm node and below, the status of the transition to 450mm wafers, and a look at high growth markets in fields closely related to mainstream semiconductor manufacturing. The topics of the sessions at The ConFab 2011 are:

Defining the New Semiconductor Landscape: a Post-recession Look at the State of the Industry
The session will cover the industry’s dramatic recovery in 2010 and a continued positive outlook for 2011 and 2012; the impact of consumerization, where almost 60% of semiconductor sales are driven by consumer demand; the restructuring of the industry that may leave only a handful of companies with the financial and technical resources to produce devices at the very leading edge; and the long term outlook for a maturing, yet-still-cyclical industry (cyclicality is a function of supply and demand, capacity, average selling price, and the high capital and operating costs of a fab).

Collaboration to Strengthen the IC Supply Chain
As the IC industry continues to scale to smaller dimensions and higher complexity chips – often called More Moore -- we’ll face increased DPI (design/process interaction) and CPI (chip/packaging interaction) challenges. This will require stronger interactions among fabless, foundry and packaging companies.  On the other hand, moving to “More than Moore” such as 3D TSV, we will see more integration issues including KGD (Known Good Die) on interposer or 3D stacking, wafer thinning/handling, and heterogeneous 2D or 3D integration of chips. The supply chain will become much more complicated as additional interfaces will have to be managed.  Since our IC industry has long been divided into EDA or fab tool supplier, fabless, foundry and assembly/test companies, getting everyone work together and making profit for each party can be extremely challenging. This session is intended to explore various alternatives.

The Challenges of Continued Scaling
This session will look at critical technologies required to remain on the path defined by Moore’s Law. Presenters will emphasize the present status and cost of development, including next generation lithography (and the rise of computational lithography), the transition to 450mm wafers, which appears to be finally underway, and front-end issues related to transistor formation – most notably the use of high-k metal gates and strained silicon – and on-chip interconnects.

Panel Session: Bridging the Fabless-Foundry Gap
A key trend in the semiconductor industry is a shift from internal chip manufacturing capabilities to fabless and fab-lite or asset-lite models. Companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Broadcomm have seen great success by designing chips and outsourcing the manufacturing to foundries such as TSMC, UMC and Global Foundries. This move to fabless has been going on for some time, but what’s changed is that fabless companies are pushing foundries, as well and equipment and materials suppliers, to develop new capabilities to address their unique requirements. This panel session is designed to give fabless companies and foundries a forum to describe what they would like see developed and discuss how to better collaborate.

High Growth Markets: Challenges and Opportunities
Many companies are seeing tremendous growth in markets that are closely related to mainstream semiconductors, including solid state lighting (high brightness LEDs), MEMS, flexible displays and energy storage. This is true both on the part of semiconductor manufacturers/foundries and equipment and materials suppliers. This session will provide an analysis of key trends in each area.

The ConFab is the place for device manufacturers to get the answers to today's economic challenges. This exclusive program  is built for the benefit of device manufacturers and their global suppliers. The ConFab is not a traditional industry trade show or conference. It is exactly what the name suggests  dialogue with industry experts, networking with global players, and alliance-building through private boardroom meetings between device manufacturers and semiconductor suppliers.