The semiconductors industry is an exciting place to be
This week, I was fortunate to spend two days in Antwerpen attending the itf World 2023 forum organized by imec. These were intense hours and I would like to share some key thoughts:
1. imec is a true success story. Kudos to that project that shows how far things can go with a consistent, sustained policy and the vision and hard work of a big team pushing in the same direction. And what an event! They managed to bring together some of the world leaders in our industry who shared insightful presentations.
2. I was very pleased to note the firm commitment of all the firms with sustainability. I can, some times, be a bit cinical with this stuff as "green" is the word of the day and it is used too liberally. But I was fully convinced that the semiconductor industry is committed to the task of protecting the environment and concern about our impact in society. We saw plans to make our operations sustainable and support other our customers to achieve that same goal. The fact that presentations combined ethical considerations with strong business cases helped to convince me that this is for real.
3. Our industry is full of talent and one of our biggest challenges is attracting the brightest minds to our industry. Everyone, everywhere is struggling to fill open positions. We, as an industry must get out of our comfort and engage with academia, governments, and the society at large to show how much fun and reward is involved in science and technology.
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4. Following the previous point. I was very impressed with the presentation by Atsuyoshy Koike from Rapidus. Technically it was great but it contained many wisdom pills and material for deep consideration. Thanks Koike-san
5. And finally, I need to share my pride to work in one of the leaders in this industry, Analog Devices. Our CEO, Vicent Roche, gave a very inspirational presentation showing our ambition to lead the industry, enable our customers, and positively impact the society at large. You can see ADI's vision to overcome the potential exhaustion of Moore's law in the figure above.
I came back home full of energy and ideas. There are many things to do but I see the commitment and ambition to do good things in many people. I must humbly admit that we are trying our best in our ADI Development Center in Valencia, Spain, but this is just the start, there are many challenges ahead... fortunately.