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Mimix Broadband Goes Fabless |
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Commentary & Perspective...
Alan Thompson Previews Our SSLS 2006 Meet in TaiwanApril 4, 2006...Our senior technology editor (and industry guru), Alan Thompson, is again serving as the hardworking program chair for our annual gathering of solid state lighting suppliers. We've renamed the event, now in its 4th year, the Solid State Lighting Supplier's Forum (SSLS 2006). Anyone who's anyone in the CS/SSL suppliers community will be there. Dates are May 9-11 in Hsinchu. After reading Alan's preview of the SSLS 2006, which follows, we're sure you'll want to be there too. Don't forget to register now as we're expecting a bigger than ever turnout...JMcD Preview of SSLS 2006 The familiar Blue conference series continues in Taiwan with the same location as past years with a title change, to Solid State Lighting Supplier's Forum 2006 (or SSLS 2006) for short. The new title reflects the increasing emphasis on lighting becoming the major market for LEDs, although other applications remain important and will certainly be covered. The conference will again be held at the Ambassador Hotel in Hsinchu, starting with our morning pre-conference workshop on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 and concluding at noon on May 11th in, thereby enabling many participants to catch planes that day). You can easily access complete details about the conference, including the registration, hotel reservations, sponsorship, and exhibition opportunities at the web site, www.ssls2006.com The pre-conference workshop this year is designed to get things off on the right note by underscoring the most important job suppliers now need to tackle... that of meeting the needs of lighting designers. Just the concept itself of having a prestigious lighting designer (Jeffrey Miller, the director of external affairs for the International Association of Lighting Designers) as the one teaching the SSL industry suppliers, systems integrators and packagers about what the end customer wants and needs is noteworthy in itself. You'll surely want to hear what Jeff has to say about the real issues facing suppliers. Jeff's workshop will run about 2 hrs and will be priced at the modest range of about $200 per attendee. Looking at the agenda
we've put together... Bob Steele's update will be followed by Asif Anwar of Strategy Analytics who will cover the supply chain for the solid state lighting industry. Several speakers will then cover the activities in the major LED producing countries and the session will conclude with a panel discussion tackling the controversial question of who will emerge as winners in the race to capture market share. After close of sessions Tuesday, we've lined up a networking reception sponsored by Veeco, from 6 to 8p. Wednesday morning, I'll open the sessions by moderating a panel looking at the prospects for significantly reducing the cost ($/lm) of LEDs. With several companies already reporting efficacies of 100 lm/W for white, we cannot expect more than a 2X cost reduction by improving efficiency to the theoretical maximum. Therefore the cost of the device must be reduced over the next decade by one to two orders of magnitude to address the general lighting market. Can this be achieved by current projections or will disruptive technologies be needed? Can we learn from the IC (Si) industry's successful reduction of cost/transistor by multiple orders of magnitude over the past 30 years? Join us and hear our industry luminaries sound off on this topic. From there, we'll then move on to technology updates for materials. In the afternoon several talks, appropriately titled: "Show me the Money" will look closely at how our industry's growth could be further financed, ranging from venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and internal growth. This promises to be an exciting and controversial topic, given the projected rapid growth, with new companies emerging, and mergers starting to take place, particularly in Taiwan. Two keynoters will be featured in this session: Richard Chen of Vincera Ventures and Peter Moran of Doll Capital Management. Later In the afternoon we will again from our workshop instructor, Jeff Miller, who is on the board of the International Association of Lighting Designers (the folks who put on Lightfair). Jeff will capsulate what was detailed in the workshop and tell us all what the lighting people really need in order to incorporate LED solutions into their designs. We then move on to applications, covering backlighting, automobiles, and architectural. The session concludes with a keynote presentation by George Mueller of Color Kinetics, with what promises to be a dynamic and thought provoking talk by a pioneer of solid state lighting. That evening's networking reception will be sponsored by Rubicon, followed by the Grand Banquet, sponsored by Aixtron. I want to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors. While major sponsorships slots are now all booked (note their names and hotlinks to their corporate sites at the head of each conference page), our conference coordinator, Tom Griffiths, says there are more slots for Gold Sponsorships still open, which will appeal to those seeking to exhibit at SSLS 2006. On the last final day, Thursday, May 11th, the conference will focus on the rapidly growing arena of high output LEDs and how problems such as heat dissipation and high optical flux can be mitigated through innovative chip design and packaging technologies. As you can see by scrolling down on the agenda page, we've lined up a great cast of key SSL industry suppliers to report, including Phil Kwan, VP of Philips Lumileds. We also have some surprises yet to announce, so... as Jo Ann always likes to say in this column space... stay tuned... as that agenda page gets updated in these final weeks of preparation. She'll be covering those "surprises" here, as soon as they can be made public. As always, ample opportunity will be given for networking at the breaks and evening receptions, plus over 30 companies are expected to exhibit during the conference, showing their latest and greatest solutions. This year promises to be even bigger and better than Blue 2005, which was very successful, so make Hsinchu in May part of your travel plans. We look forward to seeing you there! Alan Thompson If you have news or
views to share about the compound semiconductor, LED or solid
state lighting industries |
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