The IEEE Montreal Section cordially invites you to a talk by John East, Former CEO of Actel. Refreshments and snacks will be served. Please register using the link provided below.

• When: Wednesday, January 24th, 2018, 06:00 PM
• Where: Clark Room, 3rd Floor, Notman House, 51 Sherbrooke Street West, Entrance on Clark Street via Café OSMO
• Contact: Frederic Nabki, frederic.nabki@etsmtl.ca
• PLEASE REGISTER AT: https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/157420

Abstract
What was the biggest change the world has seen in the last 50 years? John East would reply: the semiconductor! Semiconductors have enabled what we now take for granted: microelectronic circuits that enable tremendous computing power, all contained within a size of a few squared millimeters.

Email? Notebook computers? Smart phones? Google? Facebook? Twitter? All huge changes to be sure, but these all are based on the advances in microelectronics that have been continuing at a frantic rate since the 50s. Imagine a world with no semiconductors – our world would be quite different. Think of it: the internet,smart phones, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Intel, Sony, Microsoft and many other pioneering companies and technologies that have changed our lives would have never seen the light of day! With none of these companies, the world’s economy and the human condition would be in a very different place.

How did one of the greatest technological revolutions of the modern age happen? Who made it happen? What were the events that shaped that industry? When did semiconductor technology begin to change the world? How did we get where we are today, integrating billion of logic gates on a chip, starting from a point when making a single logic gate seemed impossible? In fact, even a single transistor, the building block of a logic gate, could not be made reliably at the very beginning. Today, according to an estimate by Forbes [1], we have fabricated since the 50s 2,913,276,327,576,980,000,000 transistors (that is 2.9 sextillion for those counting). Quite the leap over 60 years!

This story will be told by John East, a long-time veteran of the semiconductor wars who was there when they happened, personally experienced the successes and failures, and worked directly with many of the best-known combatants.

[1] Jim Handy, “How Many Transistors Have Ever Shipped?,” Forbes, 2014.

John East was CEO of Actel, a major worldwide programmable logic provider, for 22 years, having joined during the infancy of the corporation. He retired from Actel Corporation in November 2010 in conjunction with the transaction in which Actel was purchased by Microsemi Corporation. Previously, he was a senior vice president of AMD, where he was responsible for the Logic Products Group. Prior to that, Mr. East held various engineering, marketing, and management positions at Raytheon Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor. In the past he has served on the boards of directors of Adaptec, Pericom and Zehntel (public companies), and MCC, Atrenta and Single Chip Systems (private companies). He currently serves on the boards of directors of Alacritech – A private company involved in the data storage market, Tortuga Logic – a provider of tools aimed at assuring hardware security, and SPARK Microsystems – a start-up providing ultra low power wireless transceivers. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley