Unlock the secrets behind Global Foundries' ascent to semiconductor supremacy and find out how a colossal $1.5 billion boost from the US CHIPS Act is setting the stage for technological innovation. Our guests, John Carulli, Ken Butler, and Shinji Hioki, join us from the frontlines of chip manufacturing to share their expertise on what it takes to be a pure-play foundry in today's competitive market. 

John holds 7 US Patents. He has over 50 publications in the areas of reliability, test, and process development. He is co-recipient of two Best Paper Awards and two Best Paper Nominations working in close collaboration with university partners. John serves on the organizing or program committees of several conferences including the International Test Conference, VLSI Test Symposium, and European Test Symposium. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests include product reliability, outlier analysis, machine learning, performance modeling, logic diagnosis, and security.

Ken Butler is a Senior Director of Business Development in the Advantest Cloud Solutions (ACS) data analytics platform group at Advantest.  Prior to that, he worked for more than 36 years at Texas Instruments in DFT and test generation, semiconductor reliability, analog product and test engineering, and data analytics.  Ken has a BS from Oklahoma State University and an MS and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, all in electrical engineering.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Golden Core member of the IEEE Computer Society, and a Senior Member of the ACM.

Shinji Hioki joined Advantest ACS in 2022, focusing on developing the ACS business in Japan. Prior to Advantest, he served as the ASIC Commodity Manager / Technologist at Tektronix for over five years, where he managed foundries and OSATs for ASIC production. Before his time at Tektronix, Shinji had a substantial 31-year tenure at Intel, where he held various roles in the Quality & Reliability organization, spanning development, high-volume manufacturing production, and supply chain management 

In this vibrant episode we track the transformation of silicon wafer dreams into the tangible powerhouse chips that energize our daily devices, dissecting the interplay of design, production, and the crucial customer relationships that drive the industry forward.

Feel the pulse of the semiconductor world as we tackle the elephant in the room: the pressures of Moore's law and the herculean task of safeguarding tech's most sensitive data. This episode is a call to arms for more transparent collaborations between foundries, assembly, and test operations, with an eye on the future where open data flow might just be the magic ingredient for enhanced yield management and efficiency.

As we wrap up our journey, we turn our attention to the fertile minds of tomorrow's tech leaders. We discuss how acts like the CHIPS Act and mainstream conversations about semiconductors are sparking interest among the youth, encouraging them to pursue careers in this electrifying field. Our conversation weaves through the importance of engaging storytelling in tech education, making semiconductor testing and assembly as thrilling as time travel adventures for the next generation. 

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