As the largest European trade fair for microelectronics by its own admission, Semicon Europa 2022 asserted its independent position parallel to Munich's electronica in halls C1 and C2 of the Munich exhibition center.
Ajit Manocha Opening Keynote: Expanding fab capacity by 2025Likeits sister events Semicon West (San Francisco), Semicon Japan (Tokyo), Semicon Korea (Seoul) and Semicon China (Shanghai), European Semicon covers the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain - from development to the current product range. It also takes a detailed look at the context of current and new applications, such as smart mobility and smart medtech. It will also look at new solutions for advanced packaging, fab management and materials. This year, in the face of geopolitical upheavals, health policy and economic challenges, this was and is certainly no easy task. It calls for cooperative action and new research approaches. There were also current approaches to this.
The general theme of Semicon Europa 2022 with its current 327 exhibitors (significantly more than last year), well-booked specialist conferences and exhibitor forums was 'Chips Powering The Data Age'. It therefore provided an outlook on advances in the design and manufacture of semiconductor chips. In addition to the industry's growth scenarios (which is also no easy task), it dealt in detail with issues of sustainability and resource conservation in the form of 'green manufacturing', the limits of the rapidly growing energy consumption of manufacturing and the recruitment and training of suitable specialists at all levels.
Luc Van den hove, Opening Keynote: High-Performance Computing in the self-driving vehicle
Laith Altimime, President of SEMI Europe, outlined this theme in his opening presentation: "We expect new perspectives from global opinion leaders on the trends that are critical to the growth of the industry. Companies in the semiconductor supply chains will gather here to explore new business models and technologies to further accelerate innovation." Ajit Manocha, President of the global association SEMI, insisted in his opening keynote that despite all the current trouble spots, such as the energy and financial crises and the impact of the war in Ukraine, the semiconductor industry will continue its unstoppable rise in the medium and longer term to an annual industry turnover of $1 trillion by 2030 and even $10 trillion by 2040.
Transparency is the key to the solution
The other keynotes at the Opening Ceremony from Airbus, Athinia, Edwards Vacuum, Imec, JCET Group, Porsche, Philips and Samsung also revolved around these bold prospects. Barbara Frenkel, Member of the Executive Board, was invited by car manufacturer Porsche. She provided a follow-up analysis of the ongoing chip shortage in certain product areas. Her argument was that this shortage was actually caused by inadequate and untimely communication with the chip manufacturers. As a remedy, she cited closer collaboration to ensure the flow of innovation and the stability of supply chains: "Transparency is the key to solving this critical situation." This applies in particular to the imminent transition to the 'software-defined vehicle', i.e. the vehicle as a rolling computer.
Alessandro Curioni, Director IBM Research Zurich
Luc Van den hove, President of Imec
Laith Altimime, President SEMI Europe
The Belgian research center Imec brought its International Technology Forum in the form of 'ITF Beyond 5G - Powered by Imec' as a program item at Semicon Europa. It highlighted the next steps in high-speed mobile connectivity based on compound semiconductors as a prerequisite for further chip progress. Imec President Luc Van den hove will continue to adhere to the principle of downscaling transistor dimensions in the future. At the same time, he referred to the role of thinking at system level in order to support numerical progress in the sense of 'Moore's Law'. Keywords in this direction: 3D-stacked SoCs and chiplet architectures.
From the presentation by Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow and Director of IBM Research Europe, Zurich: IBM Quantum Computing Roadmap. Keynote at the Smart and Green Manufacturing SummitThe'Advanced Packaging Conference', the established mainstay of Semicon Europa, featured presentations by Amkor, ASE, Bosch, Henkel, Infineon and Intel, among others, with examples of advanced solutions for packaging, test, equipment and materials, particularly with regard to the requirements of heterogeneous integration.
The Fab Management Forum, which has also been integrated into Semicon Europa for many years, focused on the topics of 'Datafication of Fabs' (digitization of tools and processes) and artificial intelligence in the context of semiconductor manufacturing, also with regard to the still unresolved consequences of the corona pandemic with new uncertainties in global supply chains. The contributions included presentations from Bosch, Maxwell Biosystems, Roland Berger, STMicroelectronics, TechInsights, Volkswagen and the X-FAB Group.
The Executive Forum program covered the latest innovations in materials, issues such as smart mobility, its impact on chip development, and the state of the art in power semiconductors. The presentations at the 'Smart and Green Manufacturing Summit' were the most productive in this respect. The Executive Forum dealt with ways out of the global problem of the shortage of skilled workers in the program item 'The Future of Work'.
Another broadly negotiated topic was 'Smart Solutions Paving the Way to Net-Zero Fabs'. In other words, completely decarbonized chip production as energy-neutral production. This can only be achieved by using renewable energies as part of a closed-loop circular economy with consistent reuse and recycling of materials. Whether this can be achieved by 2050 as envisaged remains to be seen. Kate Wilson from Edwards Vacuum put it in a nutshell in her keynote presentation: "We are one of the most energy-hungry industries in the world." After all, SEMI recently launched the 1st Semiconductor Climate Consortium (ISCC) at the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh.
The TechARENA addressed innovations in the field of integrated photonics, important applications such as smart medtech and, more generally, the different regional formats of political incentives to expand fab capacities. Semiconductor-based solutions for the progress of social transformation towards general smart applications in the everyday context were discussed under the heading 'Future of Computing'. The transformation of Europe into a sustainably networked digital hub was addressed in the conference program as a difficult but necessary vision of the future, with reference to the role of semiconductor technology in this development. This point in the program was illustrated by an innovation showcase in the exhibitor area.
Ebara presented a new exhaust gas purification system
At SEMICON, Ebara Precision Machinery Europe presented the Dynox exhaust gas purification system, which sets new standards in terms of environment and efficiency and combines all the advantages of the previous S.DOC technology in one product. Designed for the oxidation of pyrophoric gases, the system contributes to sustainability by reducing electricity costs by up to 95% and by the fact that only ambient air and no process gases are required and no waste water needs to be disposed of.
