This month issue An Independent Journal Dedicated to the Advancement of Chip - Scale Electronics September - October 2000 Email the editor

Ron Iscoff Editor

SEMICON West is always too long (in foot years), but never long enough to take in the full spectacle. While I don't have the figures, I suspect the amount of electricity used to demo semi-conductor equipment at the San Jose show (and to air condition it) was enough to keep a small city going for some time.

As always, West was a great time to see old friends that you haven't seen for a while. Since the San Francisco/San Jose show split a few years back, we don't see many of the old timers anymore.

Old Timers

The old Bob Marrs	The new Bob Marrs

Bob Marrs, ex-Amkor, founder of Abpac, seemed to be everywhere. Since the unfortunate demise of his Phoenix-based BGA packaging foundry, Bob has landed a job as vice president-strategic marketing for Kulicke & Soffa, Scottsdale, Ariz. You may have passed Bob on the floor and not known it. His trademark beard is missing-and so is an extra 40 pounds or so that he used to carry around. You can reach Bob at rmarrs@kns.com.

We also spotted two new Hana Micro-electronics, San Jose, employees: Richard Brancato, formerly ASAT president [richard_brancato@hanaus.com] and Malee Lowchareonkul (who usually goes by Malee for obvious reasons). Dick has taken over as president of Hana and Malee is sales manager [malee@hanaus.com]. She was formerly at NSEB (National Semi-conductor's onetime assembly operation) and before that with Alphatec.

Another face from the past belonged to Dr. Subash Khadpe. Subash has come out of quasi-retirement after a two-year absence, where he had to devote his time and energies to family matters. Subash, as most people will recall, was the founder and organizer of several small, successful niche conferences, including ITAB and Chipcon. He has no plans to revive the shows, but he continues with his newsletter. Contact him at SEMITECH [semitech.com]

We also found Gordon Daggy, the dean of Silicon Valley PR men, hanging around the Credence Systems booth talking to an old friend. Gordon continues to hold forth at Ridgaway Communications, San Jose.

Somehow we didn't run into industry vet Gary Catlin, ex-Alphatec, most recently ex-SiCoast, who joined Tessera as vice president, licensee services [gcatlin@tessera.com]. Sorry we missed you, Gary, but we got the business card you left at our booth.

Lunchtime

Now on to my lunch with Scott Kulicke, chairman of Kulicke & Soffa Industries. (Actually, it was me and about eight other media types from the trade press lunching with multiple K&S execs.)

Scott Kulicke	Joel Camarda

If you've been keeping an eye on acquisitions, mergers and expansions in the backend, you know K&S has been aggressively moving into allied businesses for the past few years. These have included X-Lam and Flip Chip Technologies (FCT).

Speaking of FCT, the redoubtable Joel Camarda, who sat next to me at the company's press luncheon, has joined the K&S/ Delco joint venture as general manager. Joel is another vet, and counts stints at IPAC, Cypress, et al.

Now that Unaxis has acquired a majority interest in ESEC, announced quietly during the show, it no longer seemed productive to ask Scott Kulicke if K&S was interested in buying the Swiss company, as I've done at past K&S luncheons.

That's it for now. I've run out of room for this issue, but we'll get into details from the K&S luncheon at a future date.