XIII SBMicro-ICMP '98, Curitiba, Brazil

Citation

(1999), "XIII SBMicro-ICMP '98, Curitiba, Brazil", Microelectronics International, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/mi.1999.21816aac.003

XIII SBMicro-ICMP '98, Curitiba, Brazil

XIII SBMicro-ICMP '98, Curitiba, Brazil

Keywords Conference, Microelectronics, Packaging

The 13th SBMicro, International Conference on Microelectronics and Packaging was held between 10-14 August 1998 and attracted 185 delegates who were offered papers from 84 speakers, a number of which came from outside Brazil.

The conference was preceded by workshop and tutorial sessions which were attended by a further 150 people keen to get introduced into the microelectronic scene. This part of the event took place in the impressive LAC training centre on the outskirts of the city on the Monday and Tuesday, the tutorials featuring exclusively speakers from overseas. The workshop, which ran parallel, was conducted in Portuguese, which might account for its popularity compared to the English language used for the tutorials.

The conference itself started early on the Wednesday and opened with a keynote talk by Pier Abetti of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA who looked at the performance of major industrial companies in the world and compared their performance and the relationship between their market value and commercial value. The route of progress of a number of these was illustrated and this provided an excellent background for a country trying to develop the technical industry that it considers vital to its industrial survival.

The opening ceremony, which followed the keynote address, was unusually preceded by a choir singing the lively Brazilian national anthem after which speeches were made by a number of government and local officials and organisers of the event and included a presentation by Philip Garrou, current president of IMAPS and co-sponsors of the event.

There were three technical sessions and one has to say that the lecture rooms were not ideal. A combination of traffic noise and echoing walls and floors made hearing difficult and visual projections onto the walls were not helpful. However, there were many excellent presentations covering various different specific applications of microelectronics. It was interesting to note that, apart from the invited papers, most came from university or research institutes, thus indicating at the present time a shortage of manufacturing capability in this sector. Emphasis was largely on ICs ­ their design and performance ­ with little description of applications because perhaps there is little to report on at this stage, or what information there is is commercially sensitive. As the industry evolves, the paper "A versatile and cost-effective PWB in COB process dedicated to ASIC prototypes", was apt and was presented by Marcio Biasoli of the LEE-IM Central Foundation for IT and CTI. He described the use of an open package developed on a printed wire board that could use low cost traditional equipment and materials normally used in the surface mount assembly process. This is very versatile and it can, in some cases, be used to replace prototypes that would normally be assembled into ceramic packages.

The desire to develop partnership activity between Brazil and other countries was a theme ably developed by Gerson Machardo's paper "Technology based entrepreneurship in Brazil ­ opportunities and capability development in the semi- conductor sector". With the increasing demand for electronic apparatus, the industry has suffered a trade deficit of $9.5 billion in 1997 and is still growing. Vital to an indigenous industry is semi-conductor technology and the author felt that it was essential for partnerships in low cost technologies to be established to provide the necessary impetus for this vital ingredient for successful industry. A specific project Mibbras has been set up to operate in a similar way to the European equivalent Fuse or Europractice and this was discussed and outlined as a possible way forward.

There was certainly something for everyone and delegates' particular interests were undoubtedly serviced. There was also a one day poster session featuring 13 presentations. The sumptuous coffee breaks took place in the exhibition area where a number of services and products were displayed. There was entertainment in the evenings by way of a Bar-B-Que on the Monday, a welcome reception on the Tuesday which provided entertainment by a ten piece harmonica band and there was a Gala dinner on the Thursday. All those who came from abroad were made very welcome and the three chairmen ­ Gerson Machado, tutorials, Carlos Reis, programme and Ivan Chueiri, general ­ are to be congratulated for the hard work they all put in to make this such a successful event.