- Trip report from SEMICON MEMS Forum in Singapore by Tom Flynn, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Coventor
It was an honor to participate in the MEMS Forum sponsored by SEMI and A-Star Institute of Microelectronics. Coventor had the pleasure of sharing the stage with founding members of innovative MEMS start-up companies, CEO’s of successful MEMS corporations, R&D veterans whose perspective spans decades, and leading figures from large scale commercial foundries and specialized equipment vendors.
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.
The most common theme among the participants was the value of time and the need to bring new MEMS devices to market within timeframes that are vastly different from the past. Many of the speakers referred to industry growth charts which highlighted the impact of consumer adoption of MEMS and the changes that has brought to our industry.
Mr. Gregory Galvin, CEO of Kionix, reminded us that the adoption of MEMS in consumer markets is relatively new. “It was IBM Thinkpad’s, in 2003, that first included MEMS devices for drop detection” (to protect the hard drives). Seagate, Samsung, the Nintendo (with its groundbreaking Wii) and the Apple iPhone all followed, ushering in a new era for MEMS, an era when time to market has become critical.” When asked about the value of time to market, Mr. Galvin, answered that “I have that conversation (time to market) daily with my CTO”. He added that “while the technical challenges are great, the challenges associated with making money in MEMS are even more difficult”.
