At SEMICON China, there was a press briefing with Ajit Manoja, the CEO of SEMI, along with Lung Chu, who runs SEMI China, and thus also has responsibility for SEMICON China. This year was the 30th anniversary of SEMICON China. I still find that surprising. Lung Chu gave some of the history of SEMICON China, but since he did it in Chinese (I was the only non-Chinese journalist there) I only understood a little of what he said. It was still very small in 2000, so in 1988 it must have been tiny. In fact, I wonder who even attended. Huawei was founded in 1987, a year earlier. SMIC was founded in 2000. So Chinese electronics was truly in its infancy. Ajit Manoja Ajit then took over and gave the history of SEMI itself. SEMI has been in existence for 48 years, meaning that it started in 1970. When it started, its foundation was to bring people together for pre-competitive collaboration to save costs and forge some common standards. There was also a lot of common interest in safety, since semiconductor manufacturing involved a lot of hazardous materials, so there needed to be collective standards on how to handle them. They also provided guidance to the young semiconductor equipment industry so that multiple companies could follow guidelines and compete. A side effect was to bring thought leaders together, promote innovation, and grow the industry. When it started, like the semiconductor industry itself, it was in Silicon Valley with no international presence. Now SEMI has seven regions: Japan, Korea, SE Asia, Taiwan, Europe, and North America. Plus, of course, China. SEMI went on to create SEMICON. There is now a SEMICON in each region, which is key to the growth of that region, bringing everyone together one a year. But it doesn't just bring people in the region together, SEMICON brings hundreds of international companies, too. SEMICON China has been the biggest for the last six years or so, and, at 70,000 attendees, is not just the largest semiconductor conference in the world, it is one of the largest conferences in the world, period. For comparison, the recent Mobile World Congress has just over 100,000 attendees, so larger, but the same order of magnitude. Of course, the biggest trend of the semiconductor industry for the last few years is the rise of China. Ajit said that he's been in the industry for 37 years. It was small when he started, but last year it passed $400B for the first time. The whole market grew 23% in just a year. As he had said earlier in the week, he pointed out that there are now a lot of growth points in semiconductor, not just one like in the era of the PC, or the smartphone. IoT, smart auto, big data, AI, ML, 5G, quantum computing, cloud computing. SEMI's mantra is: connect, collaborate, innovate, prosper, and grow. Ajit worked at Bell Labs and they had something similar as their mantra, to collaborate and solve industry problems, thus making customers successful. Ajit feels his challenge is to give back to the industry at the end of his career, and to transform SEMI to make it more relevant to its member and industry for the next 50 years, what he calls SEMI 2.0. The biggest issue is a shortage of talent. That is true in every region with no exceptions. SEMI has been running a workforce development program for the last seven years, to inspire students in high school to choose STEM education. "We inspire them, and they end up in our industry." Unfortunately, STEM education is going down around the world, even though the demand for talent is increasing. Even seven years ago, Google/Facebook/Amazon, etc., were not so big, but they suck in all the talent. Ajit couldn't say much about it yet, but SEMI is launching a new workforce development program in all regions, which he projects will make a much bigger impact on solving the talent problem. Also, as part of workforce development, SEMI is also creating a program for gender equality. In most countries, the ratio of females to males is very small, "very disappointing". This is another program that is a work in progress and should be launched by the end of the year. "Ask me about it again at SEMICON China next year," Ajit said. Ajit finished up by saying he wanted to make four more points about SEMI's transformation: Processes continue to use new material, and new gases, and have new handling requirements. SEMI is doubling down on new standards for the environment. Semiconductor manufacturing produces a lot of waste that has to be correctly processed. SEMI is revitalizing the original focus on standards for health and safety. SEMI is creating think-tanks in North America, Asia, and Europe to create an intellectual roadmap for the industry to 2030, trying to forecast how the industry will change in the next 10+ years. It's a lot easier to handle some of the short-term decisions if you know where you are going to end up. These will be set up in the next 12-18 months, and once in place they will bring the best output from them to the SEMICONs around the world to share with, and inspire the industry, and to provide thought leadership. Semiconductor is a global industry and there are clouds on the horizon. SEMI runs a global advocacy program that goes under the umbrella of the "four Ts": trade, talent, tax and technology investment. The semiconductor (and electronics more generally) depends on free trade. Talent requires encouragement of STEM education, but also the capability for talent to move to where it is needed in the world. Tax has historically been a major US issue since the US was uncompetitive. The latest changes have largely fixed that. The fourth T is investment in university research that helps lower the costs for the industry and also ensures that research is more easily shared. Ajit wrapped up: So I think in general SEMI has a clear agenda how to enable each region to grow. SEMI is committed to help each region be successful. SEMI will play role in, and help, on talent, standards, though leadership, and innovation. This is the best industry to be in and this is a great time to be in it, the most exciting time. And China is the most exciting place to be due to its ambition to grow, and it will write the next chapter of the history. Q & A Ajit was asked about the increasing concern of governments about the rise of China industry. Ajit pointed out that SEMI is an industry association but can't take a position on this. SEMI is global, and wants to see the whole world grow. This industry manufacturing supply chain is already well connected with strong bases in many regions. But there is strong interdependence. One region cannot simply say it will grow on its own, or want to slow down the other regions in some way. Otherwise, costs will go up. SEMI has the 4T agenda around the world, to help the industry grow. Ajit was asked about equipment growth. He sees strong growth to 2022, which is about as far as anyone can predict. There is very strong demand for 8", much more than the supply. Most 200mm fab capacity and the tools to expand it are hard to come by. It's not even easy, as in the past, to get old tools to refurbish. It's much easier, surprisingly, in 300mm. If you have a greenfield site, of course you will go straight to 300mm. But the demand comes from existing 200mm fabs that need to add capacity, for example for automotive, and some of them will transition to 300mm. The challenge is how to compete with a new 300mm fab against fully depreciated 200mm fabs, some of which are decades old. 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