Industry leaders will converge on the Big Island of Hawaii early November for ITPC 2008, where critical topics such as 450mm wafers, the future of Moore’s Law, 3D chips and global telecommunications will be debated.

The SEMI International Trade Partners Conference (ITPC) is an annual gathering that promotes open dialog and fosters long-term relationships among the world’s top executives. Industry leaders convene to learn and collaborate on global manufacturing, technology and trade issues for the semiconductor and other emerging industries.

The theme for ITPC 2008 is “Building Bridges to the Future”. The event will be held November 3-6 at the Fairmont Orchid, Kohala Coast, Hawaii.

Robert Bruck, vice president of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Intel Corporation, will deliver the opening keynote titled “Technology Drivers for the Future: How Moore’s Law Enables Internet Growth and Global Connectivity.”

With more than 1.4 billion users, the Internet is pervasive around the world. As mobile capabilities increase, the number of locations and the growth in applications will change how we work and live. The semiconductor industry is at the core of this worldwide phenomenon, using Moore’s Law to deliver higher functionality and complexity while controlling power, cost and size.

Michael Walker, R&D director, Vodafone and Telecommunications Chair at the University of London, will present on the topic of “Realizing Global Broadband Wireless”. His discussion will focus on what has been done and what still needs to be done to realize truly global wireless broadband communications – from a technical, commercial and regulatory perspective.

Separately, an assessment of opportunities and challenges in 450mm wafers will be given by Charles H. Fine, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management.

Other featured speakers will include Jin-Seog Choi, CTO, Hynix, talking on 300mm and 450 mm; Bruce McWilliams, chairman, Tessera, discussing innovation in consumer electronics; Won-Seong Lee, executive VP and GM, R&D, Semiconductor Business, Samsung Electronics, on trends and challenges of memory technology; Nobuaki Miyakawa, director, Honda Research Institute Japan, on 3D stacking technology; and Stuart Parkin, manager, magnetoelectronics, IBM Almaden Research Center, on spintronics.

Three high level panel discussions will also be featured during ITPC.

The Technology Executive Panel on November 4 presents “A Futuristic View of Moore’s Law.” As ICs continue their relentless drive for performance and packaging density, higher and higher demands are placed on the supplier community. The panel will be moderated by Susumu Kohyama, president and CEO, Covalent Materials, and includes panelists Paolo Gargini (Intel), Eric Meurice (ASML), Tatsuo Noguchi (Toshiba), Se-Yong Oh (Samsung Electronics), Hans Stork (Applied Materials), and Luc Van den hove (IMEC).

The Growth Executive Panel on November 5 titled “Growth: Pain or Pleasure?”, discusses extending growth strategies from within the IC sector, into related areas such as FPD and PV. Panel moderator will be Ron Leckie, president, Infrastructure Advisors, with the following panelists participating: Chris Chi (SMIC), Brian Harrison (Numonyx), Kevin Meyer (Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing), and Owen Roberts (Microsoft).

The Economic Executive Panel on November 6, “World Economic Outlook”, will address how economic policies and government decisions impact the electronics industry outlook. John Kispert, president and COO, KLA-Tencor, will moderate a panel featuring Brett Hodess (Merrill Lynch), Kyeong-won Kim (Samsung Economic Research Institute), Richard Koo (Nomura Research), Malcolm Penn (Future Horizons), and Tongsan Wang (Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics).

To register for ITPC 2008, visit www.semi.org/itpc