Scalise, speaking at the SIA’s annual media tour yesterday, declined to discuss the details, but said that any mention of a research imperative amid fierce competition for federal funds will be a boost the SIA’s agenda.

“We like to have him affirm that it’s part of our national strategy. It can’t just be hollow words,” said Scalise, declining to confirm or deny that the SIA will make a formal request to put its agenda into President’s Bush’s address.

“[Research funding] has to get done. Electronics has driven the economy,” Scalise said.

The SIA is not without its weapons. On Nov. 2, it put together a report comprising five studies warning how poor math and science skills in grades K-12 and the steady decline in federal funds for research, among other things, are dulling America’s competitive edge. The studies include “The Gathering Storm” from the National Academies; the 2004 President’s Council and Advisors on Science and Technology report entitled “Sustaining Innovation Ecosystems;” the “Innovate America” report from the National Innovation Initiative; the Defense Science Board’s report entitled “High Performance Microchip Supply;” and “Tapping America’s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative.”

“But we’ve had enough studies,” said Scalise, adding that he wants action. 

However, getting funds is not as easy as asking for them, according to Chris Daverse, a consultant with Semiconductor Research Corp. Daverse, who also participated in the SIA’s media roundtable, noted that the Department of Defense (DOD) is supposed to match $20 million from industry players as part of the Focus Center Research Program, a joint SIA-DOD program founded in 1997 to conduct a range of microelectronics research.

“It was like pulling teeth getting the $20 million from DOD,” he said, adding that private and DOD funds amounted to about $36 million this year. Indeed, federal research funds has been in a long steady decline and hit an all time low in 2000 of .007 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

The SIA’s intensified push for research dollars comes amid some good news, though. October was the first month ever the worldwide electronics industry hit $20 billion in sales, up 6.75 percent from the same year-ago period. The SIA also claims inventories were non-existent in the third quarter and that fab utilization is pushing a healthy 90 percent.

The SIA in mid-November forecast 6.8 percent growth this year to $227.6 billion in worldwide sales followed by successive increases of 7.9 percent, 10.5 percent to 13.9 percent in 2008 amounting to $309.2 billion. “We’re in a very solid demand period. The whole picture is very good,” he said.

Longer term, however, Scalise sounded the alarm about America losing ground competitively to hotbeds such as the People’s Republic of China. Besides lobbying for research dollars, the SIA will address workforce issues such as keeping foreign but U.S.-trained engineers here and strengthening math and science curriculum in grades K-12.

“We used to be able to ignore this because we had all the trump cards. Either you choose to compete or let someone take it away,” he said with respect to semiconductor manufacturing. Eighty percent of the 300 millimeter wafer fabs being built today are outside the U.S., he said, adding he doesn’t want to see the same thing that already happened in the chemical industry where only one of the 120 chemical plants under construction worldwide at an average cost of $1 billion each is being built in the U.S.

The age-old problem of training more electrical engineers in the U.S. hasn’t gone away, either.

“The high water mark was 25,000 in 1987. [That dropped] to 12,000 in 2,000 and has not gone up much since,” said Texas Instruments’ director of government and media relations Daniel Larson. “We’re really doing ourselves a disservice.”

By: DocMemory
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