The 49th SEMICON West will be held July 9-11, 2019, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Themed “Beyond Smart,” SEMICON West will reportedly take aim at global electronics manufacturing industry disruptors with programs and pavilions focused on critical areas of industry growth. Each themed pavilion (Smart Design, Smart Manufacturing, Smart MedTech, Smart Transportation, Smart Workforce, and Wearable Technologies) will feature a Meet the Experts Theater where attendees can engage informally with industry thought leaders (see Agenda at a Glance).

Legendary inventor Dean Kamen, regarded by Forbes magazine as the “Modern-day Edison,” and creator of the Segway and hundreds of other innovations, will share the stage with other keynote speakers from industry powerhouses such as AMD, Applied Materials, IBM, and Synopsys. The AI Design Forum will return on July 9 for its second year at SEMICON West. SEMI Americas, the Electronic System Design Alliance, and Applied Materials are partnering to stage the event with speakers representing the entire computing ecosystem.

The AI era is widely expected to become the largest of any in industry history, and the speakers will present new approaches for the future of computing—from materials to systems. The AI Design Forum keynote lineup includes:

• Lisa Su, Ph.D., president and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), was named last year by Fortune magazine as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. Su will describe a growing consensus that 2019 promises a historic inflection point for high-performance computing, enabled by new design approaches that go beyond node shrinking.
• Aart de Geus, Ph.D., co-founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Synopsys, a leading expert on logic synthesis and software simulation, will address how the industry can benefit from co-optimization (from silicon to software) to fulfill the promise of AI.
• Gary Dickerson, president and CEO of Applied Materials, has been recognized by Barron’s as one of the World’s Best CEOs. He will discuss how new materials and related innovations can help accelerate the breakthroughs needed in the AI era of computing by a factor of 10.    

Additional Keynotes

SEMICON West keynotes on Wednesday, July 10, will include:

• Jeff Welser, Ph.D., vice president and lab director at IBM Research-Almaden, will lay out the “Future of Computing,” including the growth of the quantum computing ecosystem and where microelectronics will find its greatest challenges and opportunities.
• Bob Pearson, senior advisor for the W2O Group and author of four books about the role of technology for social commerce, will present “From AI to Uh-Oh—Major Media Trends Shaping our Future.”
• Dean Kamen, founder of DEKA Research and Development and a legendary inventor, has most recently worked on Kamen’s Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute to biofabricate human organs.

“‘Innovation is so hard and so frustrating, it takes the intersections of people with courage, vision and resources,’” said Dave Anderson, president of SEMI Americas, quoting Kamen. “There’s no other community like SEMI for advancing the AI era, and the elite keynoters at SEMICON West promise to help the industry accelerate better business results with emerging technologies and applications.”