SEMI Forum Looks at Valley’s Future
Silicon Valley is being adversely affected by U.S. policies on taxation and immigration, said Ultratech CEO Art Zafiropoulo at a recent SEMI event. "There is something essentially wrong with a policy that forces educated people to leave and makes it easy for the uneducated to stay," he said.
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor -- PV Society, 4/27/2009
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With the economy in turmoil, Silicon Valley leaders gave their perspectives on the future of Silicon Valley at a SEMI forum last week. Art Zafiropoulo, chairman and CEO of Ultratech (San Jose), deprecated the effects that government policies and tax incentives have upon Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit. “Government regulations, both in the business and environmental sectors, are impacting the viability of Silicon Valley, the state of California, and this country,” he said.
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| Art Zafiropoulo, CEO, Ultratech |
Zafiropoulo sharply attacked the government’s education and immigration policies, and their effect on the Valley’s employee pool. He noted that in the early 1960s, ~30-40% of graduate and post-graduate students were foreign, while today that ratio is about 80%. “For years I’ve told Washington that when these students graduate with a graduate or post-graduate degree we should give them a visa or a green card to keep them here. Instead, we push them out, back to their own countries to compete with us, and yet we let unskilled people come in and call it healthy. There is something essentially wrong with a policy that forces educated people to leave and makes it easy for the uneducated to stay.”
Zafiropoulo said that, like all industries in the nation, the semiconductor sector has been hit hard by taxes. The United States has the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world, after Japan, he said, adding that Japan is reducing its rate and soon the United States will become No. 1 in the world. “People running private and public companies have as their primary objective to make money for their investors and shareholders, not for the government,” he said. “It is their obligation to go wherever they can do this, especially because U.S. government policies and the condition of the banks have caused people to trust neither.”
The Ultratech chairman said he doubts that going to the ballot box will change the situation. “Today, 60% of California voters do not work for companies — they make nothing. They work for towns, cities or the state and vote to protect their interests. The votes of those who do produce things do not equal theirs.” Zafiropoulo pointed to a deteriorating quality of life, and predicted that until the economic crisis is past, unemployment in California and Silicon Valley would rise to 13-14%.
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| Dave Bergeron, CTO, SVTC Technologies |
Dave Bergeron, CTO of SVTC Technologies (San Jose) said that between 2007 and 2008, the number of new venture start-ups in the Valley decreased from a little over 200 to ~150, with venture funding in the solar area increasing slightly over last year.
SVTC’s R&D fabs support companies that are involved in engineering material-specific novel devices, many of which are related to power and integration, not necessarily the traditional task of increasing transistor density through smaller features. “There are many skilled people in Silicon Valley who are integrating CMOS with different technologies, including carbon nanotubes,” Bergeron said, predicting that nanotechnology is where the next wave of innovation will occur. “We have a mix of people of different backgrounds able to do the innovating, which cannot be found anyplace else.”
Much of this innovation is not silicon-based, especially in the biotechnology industry’s effort to fabricate samples and do cost-effective characterization of DNA and viruses. Some are working to integrate CMOS on glass to serve these biotech needs, he said.
“We will see a continued decrease in novel memory technology, and an explosion in MEMS and CMOS,” Bergeron predicted. He said more companies are attempting to create new photovoltaic technologies, adding that solar and biotech R&D seem less affected by the economy.
“There is likely to be a combination of CMOS plus something like image sensors, biotech, MEMS and high voltages,” Bergeron said. “The biggest impact of this economic crisis will be an acceleration in this evolution and change.”
