Semiconductor conference commences in Dublin


6 Apr 2005

Senior executives from the world’s semiconductor companies are gathering in Dublin today for an international conference being held in Ireland for the first time.

The Sixth European Advanced Equipment Control/Advanced Process Control (AEC/APC) Conference, organised by Intel Ireland, takes place over three days at Jury’s Hotel, Ballsbridge. As well as hosting the event, Intel Ireland is also one of three main sponsors along with Straatum and AMD.

“The conference coming to Ireland is in recognition that Ireland is moving in the major league of high-tech industry in the world,” said Jim O’Hara, general manager Intel Ireland. “We are hosting it here because of our track record in the technology arena.”
Opening the event Tony Kileen TD, Minister for Labour Affairs, said: “This is the first major international semiconductor conference to be held here in Ireland with representatives from all the major manufacturers and their critical European technical suppliers present. Ireland has demonstrated a track record of creating an environment where foreign-owned ICT companies can be very successful and has built up a highly sophisticated and experienced network of suppliers, service companies, trade and professional organisations. This is borne out by the fact that many ICT world leaders including Intel, IBM, Dell, Analog Devices, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, Ericsson, SAP, Xilinx and Oracle have operations in Ireland.”

The conference is being attended by 270 industry representatives from all the major semiconductor companies in Europe including Philips, Infineon and ST Microelectronics.

The European AEC/APC Conference was first held in 1999. It is supported by leading institutes and universities, and complements the annual Sematech AEC/APC Symposium in US/Asia and Semicon Europe. The conference takes place at centres of the semiconductor industry in Europe. This year’s topics include looking at standards and future needs of the industry and the issues surrounding equipment and process fault detection.

By Brian Skelly