Global OPENSTAR® Conference - a Huge Success!
The Global OPENSTAR® Conference (GOC) took place on March 6-8, 2006 in Monterey, California. The GOC was the Semiconductor Test Consortium's first worldwide meeting to further awareness and deepen the understanding of the OPENSTAR® standard through education and open dialogue. Its goals were to:
- Further the development of the OPENSTAR® Ecosystem.
- Provide an open forum for both STC members and non-members.
- Bring together the worldwide membership of the STC to baseline our progress and strategies.
- Discuss topics relevant to global success in promoting and enabling OPENSTAR®.
- Actively generate more synergy between vendors and users.
- Promote the STC and enhance the value it provides to the worldwide membership.
- Enable formal and informal dialogue between members that represent all aspects of the semiconductor supply chain.
- Address STC challenges and solutions in a constructive manner.
- Celebrate our successes and accomplishments.
Judging by the participation and feedback, the first GOC was a "landmark event for our industry," as one attendee described it. The STC believes we accomplished all of our goals together through an unprecedented effort from our volunteer army. There was a broad cross-section from the semiconductor industry representing a veritable "ecosystem" of ATE end users (IDMs, foundries, fabless, universities); ATE vendors; module vendors; system architects and integrators; and infrastructure financiers. The attendees were also diverse geographically with approximately half of the membership represented from each of three regions: North America, Europe and Asia.
We conducted an evaluation survey and found some surprising results. 59 different companies attended. We had 58 out of 126 surveys returned (46%). Beneficial sessions outnumbered least at a 3.5 to 1 ratio. A robust 83% of respondents to an evaluation survey already planned to attend the next conference; 0% did not plan to attend, and 17% needed more information to commit. Vendor perspectives (Advantest, Credence, LTX, Teradyne) and the keynote presentations (N. Shahriari, R. Puhakka, J. Beardon, and M. Rodgers) garnered the highest rankings for the most valuable sessions. One participant said that it was simply the best conference – in terms of content – that he had attended in the last 16 years. Congratulations to the STC and the guest speakers for making this first global conference a superb success!
A sampling of presentations from the GOC available for public view follows. You can go to the Meeting Agenda page to recall the sessions.
Note: Additional presentations are accessible from this Web page in the "Members Only" section of our Web site.
GOC Presentations: Viewable to the Public
- FOCUS ON END USERS OF ATE EQUIPMENT (pdf, 72k)
- John Bearden, Independent Semiconductor Test Consultant
- Focus on end users of ATE - White Paper (pdf, 37k)
- John Bearden, Independent Semiconductor Test Consultant
- University Activity: Academic View (pdf,37 k)
- Abhijit Chaterjee, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Advantages of a Factory/Global Perspective in Test Floor Optimization (pdf, 306k)
- David W. Jimenez, Wright Williams & Kelly, Inc.
- What is the OPENSTAR Ecosystem? (pdf, 329k)
- Keith Imai, Advantest
- Proposed OPENSTAR Interface Specifications for High Performance Probe Cards (pdf, 1.30 Mb)
- Ken Smith, VP Technology Development, Cascade Microtech
- Driving Standardization for Manipulator, Docking and Interfacing (pdf, 4.86Mb)
- Florian Putz, Marketing, esmo
- Module Development With DSG (pdf, 457k)
- Karl Pedersen, Advantest
- An Overview of the STC UTWG (University Technical Working Group) (pdf, 61k)
- Paul Roddy, Advantest
- The Benefits of STC Membership (pdf, 348k)
- Fred Bode, STC Secretary
- Object Model Requirements (pdf, 34k)
- Tony Taylor, Taylor STIL Consulting
- STC-STIL Roadmap for 2006 (pdf, 20k)
- Tony Taylor, Taylor STIL Consulting
- What Do You Need to Get Started? -- Minimum Setup for Module Development (pdf, 211k)
- Yuhai Ma, Advantest