The shift to consumer-driven markets, growing design complexity, and the rising costs of process development are transforming the semiconductor manufacturing business. No longer able to go it alone, many IDMs are collaborating to develop manufacturing processes. Others are switching to "fab-lite" models or opting out altogether and outsourcing manufacturing to foundries. At the same time, demand for leading-edge processes has not developed as expected, and foundries are shifting investment back to 200 mm wafers.

How can an ASIC designer choose a manufacturing partner in this changing landscape? Which partner can help address the mounting number of challenges facing ASIC designers, including increasing time-to-market pressures, global supply chain management, and the intense design complexities of advanced process technologies? Executives from companies representing these various approaches will present their value proposition and field questions to help designers make the best decision for their ASIC partner.

Kazuyoshi Yamada Vice President, Custom SoC Solutions Strategic Business Unit NEC Electronics America, Inc.

Mr. Yamada is responsible for overseeing the company's custom ASIC-related business. In his more than 25 years with NEC companies, Mr. Yamada's positions have included associate vice president of the Technology Foundation Operations unit and general manager of the Technology Foundation division for NEC Electronics Corporation in Japan. In America he served as senior manager of ASIC strategic marketing, assistant general manager, and general manager of ASIC business in the western region, as well as general manager of the Technology Foundation Group. He started as a circuit designer of bipolar devices.

Vamsi Boppana Senior Director of Technology Open-Silicon

Dr. Boppana joined Open-Silicon in his current role when the company purchased Zenasis Technology in 2007. He founded Zenasis Technology to optimize IC technology for cell-based design. Prior to Zenasis, Dr. Boppana was with the Advanced CAD Research group at the Fujitsu Laboratories of America. He has six patents granted and two patents pending and has authored more than 40 publications. Dr. Boppana received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also received the Van Valkenburg fellowship award at the University of Illinois for excellence in research and the Intellectual Property Contribution award at Fujitsu Laboratories of America.

Chung Ho Vice President of ASIC Engineering and Marketing Faraday U.S.A.

Mr. Ho leads Faraday's ASIC Engineering and Marketing on corporate strategy, positioning and promoting new products and technologies in the North America markets. Before Faraday, he was the assistant general manager at NEC's Custom LSI business unit and the marketing manager at LSI Logic and Sun Microelectronics. Mr. Ho began his career at Vitesse Semiconductor as a design engineer and later became the marketing manger for its telecom product line. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and a Master of Science in technology management and marketing at MIT.

Bryan Lewis Research VP and Chief Analyst Gartner Dataquest

Mr. Lewis joined Dataquest in 1985 and founded Dataquest's ASIC/SOC/FPGA research. He is responsible for tracking and evaluating market movements, forecasting markets, and tracking technology trends. He has been a key speaker at numerous conferences and consults with a wide range of worldwide clients. Mr. Lewis received a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Oregon.

Di Ma Vice President, Field Technical Support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, North America

Dr. Ma has 26 years of semiconductor industry experience. Previously, he was vice president of operations with nVidia in Santa Clara. Prior to that, he held a number of positions, including senior vice president of operations at Standard Microsystems, engineering manager at Motorola, director of process development at Standard Microsystems; and adjunct assistant professor in Microelectronics Technology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Dr. Ma holds a master's degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics from National Taiwan University.

Naveed Sherwani Co-Founder, President, and CEO Open-Silicon

Dr. Sherwani founded Open-Silicon to bring cost-effectiveness, predictability, and reliability to the ASIC market. He was also the founder and general manager of Intel Microelectronics Services. Dr. Sherwani co-developed Athena, the Intel microprocessor design methodology and environment that has been used in the development of various leading microprocessors. Prior to joining Intel, he worked as a consultant for various telecommunications and computer companies. Dr. Sherwani also served as a professor at Western Michigan University, where his research concentrated on VLSI physical design automation, combinatorics, and graph algorithms.

Ted Tewksbury President and Chief Operating Officer AMI Semiconductor

Dr. Tewksbury joined AMIS in 2006. He has more than 20 years of semiconductor industry experience, including most recently as general manager and managing director at Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., where he ran 11 product lines, established their high-speed data converter and high-performance RF businesses, and introduced more than 180 new products. Before that, Dr. Tewksbury served as director of SiGe RF/analog product development for IBM Microelectronics and as senior design engineer for analog devices. Dr. Tewksbury obtained his bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.