Vol 16, Issue 30

July 29, 2002

Microprocessors Live!

By Peter N. Glaskowsky

It's been a terrible year for the semiconductor industry, at least on the sales side. Almost every chip maker has reported reduced sales volumes, revenues, and (especially) profits. We've all heard executives say they know this situation is just temporary, the industry will bounce back, and their companies are continuing to invest in developing the processes and products we'll need when the market recovers. These are the right things to say, but what have these executives been doing?

It looks as if they've been doing what they say they've been doing. When we requested proposals for presentations at Microprocessor Forum 2002, we were unsure what we'd get. If the industry had been scaling back its research and development spending, we might be offered a lot of rehashed reviews of old chips—or, at best, some minor updates to existing designs.

Instead, we received more than 70 proposals, and the vast majority involved substantially new and innovative chips. We were offered more first-time announcements than I can recall for any recent Forum. We decided early this year not to attempt a repeat of the marathon three-and-a-half-day conference of MPF2001. If we had, however, we still could have filled the program with interesting presentations.

Instead, MPF2002 will have the best two-day program in years. We'll see introductions of new desktop, mobile, and server processors; a slew of new 10Gb/s network processors; and embedded processors covering a wide range of market, performance, and price targets. Many of the chips we couldn't fit into the program will be covered here in Microprocessor Report, time and space permitting.

This year marks our fifteenth Microprocessor Forum, and we're pleased to announce that MDR founder Michael Slater will return to give a talk about the Forum's history. Microprocessor Report editorial-board member Nick Tredennick will make his fifteenth annual Microprocessor Report Awards presentation, continuing his streak as the only person to present at every MPF, and, of course, we'll have four excellent seminars split across the days before and after the conference.

I can't say much about the proposals we've accepted; you'll have to come to the Forum for the full details. I can say we're now seeing more cross-fertilization in the industry than ever before. Fewer and fewer microprocessors are pure implementations of a single concept. PC processors are borrowing features from server chips; embedded processors are being extended into media processors; and network processors are adding a little bit of everything.

With 70+ proposals competing for about 20 slots, we were forced to turn down many worthwhile presentations. We regret this, but we know the Forum represents a significant investment of time and money by our presenters, attendees, and sponsors. We want to make sure this Forum, like every Forum, provides everyone with the best possible value.

Which leads me to a related topic. With microprocessor developers investing in new products to lead them out of the doldrums, now may be the right time for us to expand our conference business. We believe that by next year, our industry will be restored to its former state of health and robust growth. Should we add more tracks to our existing conferences? Should we add a third conference to the schedule? We could even do an overseas event, reaching microprocessor designers and their customers in Europe or Asia.

Your comments and suggestions on this matter would be most welcome; just drop me a note: png@reedbusiness.com. Time is of the essence; if we're to set up a new event in 2003, we must move quickly. Should we decide to add a new conference, expect to hear about it in October at MPF2002.