My trip to California continues to be very interesting. Last week, I rode the lovely train that runs south from San Francisco all the way to San Jose. They tell me that San Jose is the capital of this rather amorphous place called Silicon Valley. I have to believe them, but it does seem a tad odd that although Silicon Valley is not on the map and has no boundaries or post office, it has a capital. It may take a while longer for me to understand things here, but nonetheless last Tuesday was fascinating.

From the train station in San Jose, I took a small shuttle bus (how lovely – it was free!) to the San Jose Convention Center. Things seemed very quiet there at 8 o'clock in the morning, downtown in the capital of Silicon Valley. I'm guessing there aren't quite as many people buzzing about in that place as there may have been in the past.

Indeed, I noted from the window of the train speeding south that there are a rather remarkable number of unoccupied business buildings (at least I believe they are unoccupied as the parking lots adjacent to these dozens of buildings stand completely empty) in the communities of Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Santa Clara. Presumably this is the lingering affect of what they refer to here as "The Downturn."

When I walked into the San Jose Convention Center, it was absolutely devoid of people – cavernous, empty, and full of echoes. There was one small sign in the lobby with an arrow pointing to the right that said ARS.

As I was hoping to attend the Advanced Reticle Symposium that seemed to be the right direction to go. After walking for what seemed like a mile or more, I went up a small escalator and came upon a gathering of people. Tables were set up in the area to serve lunch for what looked like 100 or more, the nice women at the registration table greeted me and had my lapel badge ready, and I was invited to go into Room J. There I found the ARS underway.

The man speaking from the well-appointed stage at the front of the room was someone I later learned was Ken Rygler. It was not easy to discover his name – having arrived several minutes late – because his name was not on the program anywhere. That's unfortunate as Mr. Rygler served as the Master of Ceremonies for the entire daylong event. Apparently Mr. Rygler is a consultant of some sort. He is also a man with a temper, which I will get to shortly.

As I took my seat, I noted there were approximately 100 people in the room. An hour later, I noted that many more people had arrived, quietly entering from the back and filling more seats until there were closer to 200 people all told in attendance.

Over the course of the day, we were treated to a series of keynotes and invited papers. It was hard to tell the difference, quite honestly, between a keynote and an invited paper. In general, each man who spoke did so for 20 to 30 minutes. The speakers included:

Dan Hutchinson from VLSI Research
Rick Cassidy from TSMC
Chris Malachowsky from Nvidia
Klaus Rinnen from Dataquest
Michel Cote from Synopsys
Kjell Bohlin from Micronic Laser Systems
Craig West from Toppan Photomasks
Douglas Resnick from Molecular Imprints
Hideaki Kobayashi from NDP
Yuan Zhang from Photronics

Amusingly, a number of these men started out their presentations by saying they didn't know anything about the subject at hand – reticles for semiconductor device manufacturing – but said they had agreed to speak, so speak they would.

Of equal amusement was the number of times the speakers would refer to a particular slide in their presentation – projected for the audience on large screens to the left and right of the stage – as an eye chart. Every time there was an eye chart, it would come with an apology from the speaker, and yet without fail these were the slides that had the least amount of time up on the screen. The eye charts contained the most information, yet were the hardest to read.

It was hard not to wonder – as I have mentioned to you on other occassions – if these men actually ever looked at their slides before the presentation? They must not have, or else why would they have allowed themselves to be in a position of having to apologize over and over again? Surely they could have seen in advance that a slide had too many words and the words were too small for the average person sitting in the audience to actually read.

This happened so many times last week at the ARS, at one point I was tempted to take my chair right up onto the stage and sit next to the podium adjacent to the speaker. I would then have been able to see what each speaker could see – their slides being displayed in front of them on a large TV set positioned below the stage and facing up so that each of the men had a tele-prompter for his speech. Clearly things were set up so the speaker could read the slides – why not arrange for the rest of us to be able to do so as well?

In any case, you've heard me complain of this phenomenon before, so I won't belabor the point. In some small and endearing way last week, it was comforting to see that although technology appears to advance – men and their manners apparently do not.

And speaking of manners, several of the speakers at the ARS meeting last week either failed to shave or forgot that jeans and a denim shirt probably aren't appropriate if you have been asked to make a presentation in front of 200 professionals.

You know well, Winifred, that I love a Bohemian as much as the next person, but it does seem so odd that several speakers at last week's meeting – men who I have strong reason to suspect are quite well off – couldn't find a dress shirt or find time to shave.

I allowed my imagination to wander a bit as I watched these individuals read their eye charts to me – and I tried to conceive of such individuals showing up at Buckingham Palace unshaven or sans pressed shirt & tie. Quite clearly, not all gentlemen are technologists and neither are all technologists gentlemen.

Could you ever picture a woman asked to make a presentation in front of 200 professionals coming up on stage in jeans and denim shirt, or forgetting to comb her hair. Inconceivable!

And speaking of demeanor – our poor Mr. Rygler quite lost his composure mid-morning at the meeting when confronted with a question from a journalist in the audience. The journalist – I believe his name was Mark LaPedus – posed a question to Mr. Cassidy, the President of TSMC, who was just finishing his keynote address.

Mr. LaPedus' question was based on something he thought he had heard Mr. Rygler say earlier in the morning about the fading economic viability of the fabless/foundry model. When Mr. LaPedus referenced Mr. Rygler's comment in asking Mr. Cassidy what he thought of the possible dimming of the prospects for the fabless/foundry model, Mr. Rygler – standing on stage next to Mr. Cassidy – angrily responded although the question had not been directed at him.

Mr. Rygler pointed at Mr. LaPedus and said, "I will kill you! I know you and I will kill you if you say I said the fabless/foundry model will fail!"

There was a gasp from the audience and Mr. LaPedus stood very still at the microphone on the floor of the room.

Mr. Rygler went on: "What I'm saying is that the foundries have the key to the kingdom – the problem is better addressed by IDMs."

Mr. LaPedus continued to stand very still.

Mr. Cassidy then said, in an obvious attempt to defuse the situation: "Big is best across the entire industry. TSMC has been able to put leaders in the space together. And Ken [Rygler] is correct – reintegration is happening."

Mr. LaPedus started to ask a follow-on question, but Mr. Rygler turned away from him and pointed to someone else out in the audience to offer up a question. Mr. LaPedus finally backed away from the microphone and returned to his chair. It was a remarkable moment and one, I'm quite sure, few people had witnessed before – a personal threat right there in sane and sanitary Silicon Valley.

No matter, really, but the specter of such a thing did help to pass some of the more staid moments during the conference. Meanwhile, perhaps you're interested in a few of the other things I learned during the day spent at the ARS.

Mr. Hutchinson reviewed the entire history of the semiconductor industry. That history only goes back, per his version, about 100 years – not much of a history, but these men are nothing if not focused on their world. More fascinating than the history lesson, however, was Mr. Hutchinson's comment that lithography as a technique for laying down features on a piece silicon may be replaced with self-assembly. That caught my attention although I suspect few others in the room wanted to hear about what is termed by a some a "disruptive technology" – disruptive because is disrupts the business models for anyone who makes reticles – or masks – for a living.

Mr. Cassidy said that "TSMC loves to make wafers." He also said, "By golly, we must guarantee that our customers are successful" and he pointed out that TSMC was until recently the 2nd largest producer of masks in the world.

That was pretty interesting considering that companies in the foundry business are not usually considered to be in the mask-making business as well. Mr. Cassidy's eye charts were full of recommended design flows that I presume he uses to instruct his customers as to which software tools they should use to design the computer chips that he's going to manufacture. He ended by assuring the audience that TSMC is solving design for manufacturing and yield sensitivity problems. Mr. Cassidy is a very confident man.

Mr. Malachowsky was the most popular speaker of the day – he showed a gaming video full of monsters and scantily clad women warriors. The audience was on the edge of their seats. Mr. Malachowsky said he had been in Beijing the previous week showing the same video and that his audience there had been equally entranced.

Meanwhile, I was thinking that perhaps Mr. Rygler could take out some of his pent-up frustrations with a few more hours playing the games that run on Mr. Malachowsky's chips. I didn't raise my hand with that suggestion, however, as I would prefer that Mr. Rygler not know who I am. I would rather not be Mr. LaPedus, as you can imagine.

Mr. Malachowsky's eye charts that followed the video were of particular interest – everyone came up to the stage afterwards to inspect the details more closely. The charts told the whole story about how long it takes to go from the design to the manufacturing of his products, some of which have more than 300,000,000 transistors. That's a lot of transistors, Winifred – in the realm of how many angels fit onto the head of a pin. At 90 nanometers, apparently, it's approximately 300,000,000.

Mr. Rinnen told the audience about what he sees as long-term trends in the industry. He said there would be a slow decline in mask volume because there are less chips being designed worldwide. He also said that mask sets at each progressive node would get more expensive. He also said that consumers of electronic gadgetry are driving the industry worldwide – and those consumers are "unpredictable, fashion driven, and price sensitive." All told, Mr. Rinnen's news was not uplifting. He said that of the 45 companies making masks today, only 25 would be left by 2014.

Consolidation is coming, according to Mr. Rinnen. Nonetheless, Mr. Rinnen advised his audience to avoid a price war because "the industry can't afford it." He ended rather grimly: "How we do business will change. Ignoring this fact will be fatal."

Oh my – more death threats.

Mr. Cote brought a sunnier outlook with him up onto the stage. He said that DFM – which as you know, Winifred, stands for Design for Manufacturing – is wonderful and has spawned more than 60 new companies of late in the design automation industry.

He also said that the files that carry the data used to make masks – the GDS files – can contain up to a half terabyte of data. That's bad – but not surprising considering how many angels we're trying to get onto the head of that pin! In any case, Mr. Cote said that the new OASIS standard would help to solve that. That's good – same number of angels, but less data required to describe them.

Mr. Cote had more to say, but his eye charts were the worst of the day and I threw down my pen and looked away in disgust.

Mr. Bohlin was left with little time to speak as we were bumping up against lunch by the time he was belatedly given his spot up on stage. He spoke briefly and blessedly to the point. Then we went out for lunch – which was absolutely delicious, by the way.

After lunch, Mr. West, Mr. Resnick, Mr. Kobayashi, and Mr. Zhang each spoke at length. It was somewhat difficult to concentrate in the hour just after the meal, but as the afternoon wore on – the lovely American coffee started to kick in and it was easier to pay attention in the second hour than in the first.

Mr. West cited the famous American author, Mr. Mark Twain:

"Don't go around say that the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

I believe Mr. West's point was that there are big problems with respect to the rising costs of building the factories to make the computer chips – that is if you think three or four billion dollars is a lot of money – while the costs of designing those chips and the costs of making the masks that convey those designs to those factories are also rising.

Mr. West said that between the design tool companies, the mask makers, and the people who make computer chips – who's to blame for this situation may not be totally clear. So Mr. West seemed to conclude that everybody should share in the blame – at least, that's what I heard him say.

As I said, I was not so alert for the portions of the program delivered by Mr. Resnick, Mr. Kobayashi, or Mr. Zhang. I do know that Mr. Zhang said that collaboration is needed to help reduce the costs of making masks. He said that the new company BlazeDFM is on the right track, and that collaboration with the EDA industry would help to control the costs.

Eventually, the hand of the clock pulled around to 3:40 pm and a panel discussion ensued on stage. The men on the panel discussed the question de Jour: "Is Moore's Law Valid in Today's Environment?"

I have to say that this question has been hashed, re-hashed, and hashed again – and is becoming as stale as yesterday's corn beef and cabbage. So although I made a valiant attempt to jot down each pearl of wisdom from the various participants, I couldn't do it. The words I heard from the men perched up in front on their barstools were a blur:

Clearly I had reached the limitations of my own roadmap and decided the one truly innovative and creative thing I could do was to get up out of my chair and quietly let myself out the back door. I walked quickly past the seductive piles of food and drink being prepared out in the foyer for those brave enough to last through til the 5 pm Happy Hour.

To my dismay, there was even a chocolate fountain gurgling away amidst the food – but I resisted temptation, made my way down the escalator, walked back through the lonely corridors out to the street, caught the shuttle back to the train station, and gratefully took my seat on the train where I opened my book to read and relax as we glided back north towards San Francisco.

Perhaps at this point, Winifred, you think I have misled you in saying that my day last week was fascinating. Yet in fact, that is the truth.

Having been, as you know, at the Design Automation Conference several weeks before the ARS – it was of no small interest to me to hear what the other voices from what they call "The Semiconductor Supply Chain" think about the situation with regards to how the products that you and I love so well – our computers, cell phones, and game cubes – are made.

Clearly design and manufacturing are really expensive, yet you and I are able to purchase our electronic gadgetry at reasonable prices.

There is a merry mix-up of sorts going on here. It costs more and more to make the computer chips, yet it costs less and less to buy the devices that house those chips.

Where it will all end? Who can say?

For now, I look forward to my visit to Semicon West next week – the big semiconductor show. As you know, it's in San Francisco and although Mark Twain warned that it can be cold in the City by the Bay – I'm enjoying light breezes and sunshine this week, which I expect to continue through the remainder of my stay.

I hope this letter finds you well. Call me when you have a chance – or better yet, drop me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing how things are in your corner of the world.

Warmest regards,

Jane Marple

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July 20, 2005

Peggy Aycinena owns and operates EDA Confidential. She can be reached at peggy@aycinena.com

Copyright (c) 2005, Peggy Aycinena. All rights reserved.