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EM Asia: What are some of the key technology developments that have been identified in this roadmap? McElroy: In terms of what we have seen from the “state of the art” in our industry, one of the areas that we have highlighted is the convergence market where technologies that might have been developed for one market segment are now being applied to other market segments. For example, the application of consumer electronics in the automobile and high volume medical electronics industries. This convergence presents a number of challenges because within these devices, the components that are used may have been designed for a specific application. And now they are being applied in different ways. Wireless and portable products are also a big part of this convergence. In terms of R&D, manufacturing has been migrating for some time but now we are starting to see more migration of R&D functions as well. A number of North American and European firms are now setting up R&D centers in China. One of the areas of research is in photovoltaics. With the energy situation where it is right now, we fully expect the price of oil to go back up again as soon as the economy recovers. So from a conservation point of view as well as looking at alternate sources of energy, this area is going to be very interesting for our industry. Also, with the economic situation right now, companies may increase their focus on photovoltaics to compensate for the slowdown in other areas of their business. EM Asia: How do you see the long term prospects of the solar energy or photovoltaic industry? McElroy: We should keep in mind that this technology—looking at it on face value—is still not cost competitive right now. In places where it has gotten the most emphasis are areas where there have been the most incentives. For example, the governments of countries like Japan and Germany have poured in pretty significant amount of incentives to offset the cost disadvantage of using this technology. And even in the US with the new administration, we may see some significant incentives to boost the usage of the technology there. But the fundamental issue is that we need to continue to develop the technology so that we can drive the cost down and not rely on incentives. In short, we need to look at the long term solution and this might take some time, especially if we are looking into alternative materials besides silicon. The other side of this is energy conservation. If we think about the whole energy situation, the near term gains can be had much more quickly from conservation than from developing new technology. We have a new roadmap chapter now on conservation that focuses on solid state lighting which is one mechanism whereby we can bring down energy usage. EM Asia: Explain “More than Moore”. McElroy: We have a lot of information in the roadmap on advanced packaging which will require significant investment with new materials and new techniques. In the last cycle, we were talking about system-in-package or SiP which is becoming even more important. Now, we are discussing it in terms of “More than Moore” – how do we get beyond Moore’s Law and how do we create advantages in terms of the performance and density of the package. We think there’s going to be increasing emphasis on packaging and we are certainly interested in doing more work to address the technology gaps in this area. EM Asia: More environmental regulations are coming at the electronics industry – how do we cope? McElroy: We are doing a lot of work in the environmental space and really our emphasis now is to be more proactive. In the past, I think our industry reacted to regulations starting in Europe, then in Asia and now in the US as well. It’s at a point now where these regulations are coming at the industry faster than we can deal with them. We want to be more in the forefront where we can help the industry ahead of time to get ready for new regulations coming in. This way, hopefully we can come up with better solutions and I think the industry can influence the regulations as well with better science and understanding of these environmental tradeoffs. The fact is that it is all about tradeoffs. Going to lead free has actually increased energy consumption in manufacturing so the more we can look at this from a holistic point of view and understand the environmental tradeoffs then I thinkeverybody is better off. | 
