ITC Mobile Conference Guide
Thursday Keynote Address, 11:00
Addressing Semiconductor Industry Needs: Defining the Future Through Creative, Exciting Research
Room Ballroom AB
Ken Hansen, CEO, Semiconductor Research Corporation
In the history of the semiconductor industry, there has been no other period in time with as much uncertainty in the way forward. But with uncertainty comes great opportunity. There is a need for transformative innovation fueled by breakthrough research to reinvigorate the growth of the industry. This talk will identify some of the new exciting challenges the industry is facing and research areas where investment is needed to address them. Systems of the future —autonomous vehicles, internet of things, self-adaptive configurations modeled on biology—will require advanced techniques to test them, secure them, reduce their power, and produce them without error. This increase in complexity coupled, with a decreasing ability to rely on deterministic circuits, requires new approaches to be created by cross-disciplinary teams co-optimizing across the entire design hierarchy space.
About the speaker: Ken Hansen joined Semiconductor Research Corporation as its President and CEO in June 2015. Ken brings his experience as the former Vice President and Chief Technology Officer with Freescale Semiconductor. Prior to becoming CTO at Freescale, Ken was Vice President and led Freescale’s Chief Development Office where he improved design efficiency and reduced product cost for all Freescale business units. Previously, he held several senior technology and management positions at Freescale and Motorola leading research and development teams. He received the BSEE and MSEE degrees from the University of Illinois where he also has been recognized as an ECE and College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni, is a Fellow of the IEEE, and holds 11 U.S. patents. Ken is an industry veteran, with 40 years of experience in technical management and system/circuit design, primarily in the area of wireless communications.