According to the Enquirer, Bernard Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, said during his keynote address, at the annual Semicon West conference that silicon is being engineered on such a small scale that a whole new way of building chips is needed.
If Bernard was right then attending the 30th International Conference on the physics of Semiconductors, even if just for a day, may be well worthwhile.
The conference features state-of-the-art research and an 'all star,' if it were baseball, lineup of researchers sharing ideas and prompting answers to Bernard Meyerson's reported concerns.
The conference is hosted in the Coex in Seoul from the 25th July to the 30th July. There will be young researcher awards presented and the conference also features a Nobel forum.
The conference is supported by academic, government and industrial organizations and the support is perhaps a reflection of the vast applications of semiconductors, their industrial uptake and the bearing they have on the future of multiple industries and products.
In fact, in May 2010 Korea.net reported that Korea's semiconductor industry grew 97.7 percent year-on-year to USD 4.2 Billion.