With IC industry giants like Intel, AMD, Unisem and SIMC setting up shop in Chengdu, the city is fast becoming the third major hub for mainland China's IC industry. The much anticipated 13th International IC-China Conference & Exhibition (IIC-China) opens today at the Chengdu Century City New International Convention and Exposition Center. It will be followed by three more stops in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, respectively. This year's IIC-China is the largest in the event's history. It's also the first time that such a world-renowned system design event has taken place in Chengdu. Many of the world's ten largest semiconductor firms, including Intel, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Texas Instrument, will showcase their latest technologies at the event.

Focusing on West China, World-class IC Event Debuts

"We've been expanding the IIC-China event to mainland China's key IC hubs, so this can be seen as the barometer of the industry," said Mark A. Saunderson, President of the Electronic Business Unit of Global Sources. The breadth, depth and scale of IIC-China ensure its leadership among mainland China's industry events and it attracted over 29,000 visitors last year. The event showcases the latest technologies in the industry including IC applications, embedded and EDA technologies.

"The breakthrough for this year's event is that we've expanded it to the West China – to Chengdu," said Saunderson. Building on last year's successes in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, IIC-China expanded its line-up to West China's Chengdu in 2008. The event offers over 1,400 booths, up 34 percent from 2007. The inaugural Chengdu show will feature over 100 booths.

Saunderson said that Chengdu is a rising star of the electronics design industry. As one of the country's major electronics and IC centers, Chengdu is not only home to a number of IC production firms, but is also a hot location where the world's top OEM companies are based. Expanding IIC-China to Chengdu represents the event's focus on the development of West China and has cemented Chengdu's status as one of the most important IC production hubs. Saunderson added: "Many companies have come here to exhibit for the first time and we hope there will be more to come next year."

It was announced that, in 2009, IIC-China will be held in six cities in China. The Chengdu leg of the event will be held in November.

Event Creates Huge Opportunities for All Participants

"Over 20 IC companies from Chengdu will exhibit at the show. Exhibiting will help these IC companies better blend into the international market," said Fu Xuequn, the deputy director of the Management Committee of Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone. The size of the pavilion for Chengdu exhibitors is over 200 m2 and local IC enterprises hope to explore business opportunities by exhibiting at the event and meeting with representatives of the world's IC giants.

Exhibitors from these world's top IC enterprises are looking forward to meeting local IC firms as well. We were told that Renesas, Micrel and STMicroelectronics are among the big IC companies that will join the Chengdu event for the first time. In addition to exhibiting, they are also investigating Chengdu's environment for expansion. Micrel's International Marketing & Sales Manager, Jae Park, told us that before coming to Chengdu, their global business partner Unisem from Malaysia had set up a packaging and testing factory in Chengdu.

"This show offers huge opportunities for the future development of the IC industry in Chengdu," said Fu. The IC industry has been one of Chengdu’s three key industries. In 2008, Chengdu Hi-Tech Zone will build on the success of its three production lines of 8-inch chips in collaboration with SIMC and try to add another production line for 12-inch chips. The Zone will also help develop and attract more high-end IC design enterprises to Chengdu, with the goal of attracting 100 enterprises with over 10,000 employees in the next three years. He said: "We expect IC industry revenues in the Zone to reach 30 billion by 2010."