Travel to SEMICON Taiwan and SEMICON Europa this fall put us in touch with groups of people interested in learning more about the role of the ESD Alliance within SEMI. Our conversations reinforced our conviction and SEMI’s that design and manufacturing are moving closer together and the reason we began our “Connecting the Divide” campaign.

Connecting the Divide, the centerpiece of our 2020 programs, is meant to help both the design and manufacturing communities gain a better understanding of each other’s ecosystems and challenges. It gives us a reason to review our mission and value propositions to ensure we continue to meet the needs of our system design ecosystem and the entire electronic product supply chain as we move forward.

The Electronic System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance) has a long history of supporting electronic design automation (EDA) going back to 1989 when it was founded as the Electronic Design Automation Consortium (EDAC). After assessing the market in 2016, we expanded our reach and changed the name of the organization to include developers and suppliers of semiconductor IP, embedded software, design services, and packaging and PCB/interconnect design.  Along with the EDA suppliers, they provide the software, services, intellectual property and hardware needed to design and verify semiconductors, associated software, packaging and interconnect technologies for the manufacturing of these products. They also need a voice, something we provide as part of our charter to communicate and promote the value of the design ecosystem as a vital component of the global electronics market.
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