Editor's Page

Ebullient Europa

The move of Semicon Europa from Geneva to Munich portends a renewed energy and focus for the show that parallels the ebullience of the continent's semiconductor community. SEMI's decision to relocate to a new facility in a city known as one of the world's high-tech hubs was no surprise, especially given the expensiveness and inconvenience of Geneva. As much as anything, the member companies spoke and SEMI listened. The fact that Munich's first Semicon coincides with a bright outlook for the European advanced microelectronics industries just adds to the energy of the event.

The big three Euro-chipmakers — Siemens, STMicroelectronics, and Philips — have edged into or are on the cusp of the Top 10 global elite, taking market share away from their North American and Asian competitors. SEMI's European member companies continue to be innovative and aggressive. Equipment houses such as ASM Lithography and Steag have established themselves as world-class players. Soitec, with its new factory near Grenoble, has emerged as a front-runner in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer technology. Air Liquide continues to be one of the leading global gas and chemical companies, while the recent marriage of Meissner+Wurst and Zander has created a global powerhouse in the facilities management and construction realm.

IMEC, LETI, the various Fraunhofer institutes, and other members of the European R&D community are also flourishing, providing their industrial partners with valuable technology and expertise. A new program, known as Euraccess, will focus on Europe-based precompetitive applied research in deep-submicron technologies, bringing together universities, national organizations such as LETI and IMEC, and the semiconductor companies to develop advanced chipmaking schemes. (A news story on Euraccess begins on page 16 of this issue.)

For those attending the Munich show, here are a few sightseeing suggestions that might actually have some value for your day job. Ask your hotel concierge to help arrange a tour of the BMW factory. Chip people could stand to gain a few manufacturing insights from other industries, especially in areas such as advanced process control and factory integration and automation. Even the most parochially minded semiconductor engineer might learn something from an industry where true tool uptime is in the 90%+ range instead of the comparatively abysmal percentages found in most chipmaking facilities.

Another site of interest is the Deutsches Museum, home to one of the largest technology collections on the continent. Permanent exhibitions in disciplines such as astronautics, chemistry, machine components and tools, physics, printing, and scientific instruments reveal the steady, sometimes explosive progress of technological knowledge as well as the application of that knowledge to industry. Is it absurd to think that there might be inspirational threads running through the historical development of technology and that these threads might connect to challenges facing the premillennial chipmaking world? You might even want to check out the microelectronics exhibit at the Deutsches Museum, if for no other reason than to compare it with the Miniature Revolution rooms at San Jose's new Tech Museum of Innovation.

There's been a lot of talk about what it takes to achieve critical mass in the semiconductor business, and the confluence of a reinvigorated Semicon Europa and a dynamic EU microelectronics industry should further this goal.

Tom Cheyney
Editor
tom.cheyney@cancom.com