The British semiconductor delegation, composed of 24 firms led by the UK Government's National Technology Adviser Dave Smith, has made its splash at SEMICON for the second year in a row.
The British office claimed the Pavilion is the third biggest national pavilion of this year's convention.
Future belongs to compound semiconductors
At the opening, President and CEO of SEMI Ajit Manocha declared the next decade would belong to compound semiconductors, a field in which the UK is the most focused.
"We're running very tight on Moore's Law on silicon technology", said Manocha, which means silicon photonics and compound semiconductors would be key to creating the AI chips and quantum computing, that enables the functionality of future mobile devices."
Manocha urges the UK to make itself more visible and collaborate further with Taiwan. He believes Taiwan is the foundation of the global semiconductor industry, where the production of Nvidia's AI chips would not be possible without the efforts of TSMC and ASE.
The British Representative to Taiwan, John Dennis, echoes this point, suggesting the pavilion showcases the dynamic potential of Britain's thriving tech sector and embodies their commitment to learn and collaborate with Taiwan's renowned semiconductor industry.
National Technology Adviser Dave Smith on his first visit to Taiwan believes the unique strength of the UK and Taiwan to be mutually complementary, describing it as a "jigsaw coming together." Smith believes the UK holds three areas of strategic advantage in the field of semiconductors: research and innovation system, open market, and technology ecosystem.
Furthermore, he emphasizes the UK is not trying to replicate the success of Taiwan and its large-scale manufacturing but rather they wish to double down on its R&D strengths, leveraging the legacy of Arm in chip designs while propelling its field of compound semiconductors. The delegation is made up of firms ranging from specialties such as photonics, and quantum to memory and manufacturing equipment.
Those firms include the likes of Advancete, Bay Photonics, Blueshift Memory, EMU Technologies, Gencoa, Gorilla Technology Group, IceMOS Technology, ipTEST, KuasaSemi, Kubos Semiconductors, Loadpoint, Lumai, Microbritt, Nanomation, ProSpectral, Quantum Science, Quinas Technology, Skylark Lasers, Smartkem, Thermco System, Crypto Quantique, CSConnected, Oxford Instruments, and Oxford Quantum Circuits.
Program Manager of Innovate UK Louise Hooker says 15 of these visiting semiconductor firms have previously been to Taiwan under their supervision which means this time they are not starting from scratch, instead are capitalizing momentum and further cementing relationships with potential Taiwanese partners.
Hooker mentions she is expecting some promising tangible outcomes from a lot of these efforts with some of these returning British firms undergoing the process of signing MOUs with local firms while many have had meaningful engagements with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
