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APEC 2001 - A California Adventure!
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Press Release:
Post Conference Story
APEC 2001, held March 4-8 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, withstood threats of inclement weather and disappointing financial reports from Wall Street as we presented the most comprehensive conference addressing "applied" power electronics. The true test of the strength of any conference is attendee support during an economic downturn. With the NASDAQ falling 60% from it's record high of exactly a year ago, which led to travel restrictions being imposed on some of our Fortune 100 corporate attendees, APEC 2001 was still able to set new records for technical session attendance (736), total attendance (2275) and exhibitor participation (820). These records were established in spite of a temporary shutdown of major northeast airports due to a snowstorm.
During my interviews with several longtime attendees, I was told that APEC 2001 was the "best ever," that provided "fantastic audio/visual equipment" to clearly see the materials being presented, and "everything worked." What the attendee does not see is the behind the scenes effort by our conference management and conference committee, in conjunction with the local hotel staff, to anticipate every possible scenario and have a contingency plan in place. One example, was the decision to expand the number of booths for our exhibitors. Our initial floor plan provided 132 booth spaces for this year's conference. Due to strong exhibitor desire to be included, our conference management team and exhibits chairman John Bassett, expanded the layout to include 148 booths, 43 more than APEC 2000. As it turned out, even with some cancellations we were successful in selling every one of the 148 booth spaces, setting another conference record. When you consider the current economy and our 10th consecutive year of selling out the exhibit hall, you can appreciate the "return on investment" which every exhibitor realizes with respect to their participation at the APEC conference and exposition.
To monitor our performance with the exhibition aspect of APEC, three prizes were given out in our Tuesday evening drawings contingent on the response to a six question survey. We continue to look for the "voice of the customer" with respect to our goal of continuous improvement in every aspect of APEC. As one of the judges selected in counting the votes on questions relating to the best booth, best giveaway and happiest sales person, I can report that the ballot of one of our annual attendees contained manual punches, hanging chads and dimples. To protect this individual, I will not give out Art's last name! Blue ribbons were given out and the ballot results were as follows: IR was selected for having the best booth with Intersil capturing the support of the voters for both the best giveaway (illuminating, clear, hard rubber balls), and happiest sales person.
For filling out the survey: Third place prize, a Palm Pilot was won by Gim Soon Wan and the second place prize, a portable Panasonic DVD player was won by Dennis Stephens. Doug McIlvoy, winner of the first place prize, walked out of the exhibit hall with a Compaq 12XL300 Notebook Computer. In reality, considering the unlimited "free" food and beverages served in the exhibit hall, we were all winners.
The APEC conference is an annual "family gathering" where academic and industry leaders demonstrate the true benefits of "partnering." Having nine of the past ten General Chairman of APEC in attendance this year illustrates the good will and camaraderie of these individuals. Each of whom represented one of our three sponsoring organizations during the past decade. Many of these past chairmen have remained very active in support of APEC through their current volunteer activities.
APEC is a multilevel conference in which component manufacturers, as well as power supply and DC/DC converter manufacturers, display their latest product offerings to meet current and future demands. They also participate as authors and session chairmen of our technical program. Having multilevel participation is a must if we are to focus on "time to money," an expression I prefer over "time to market." Let me illustrate an actual APEC experience. As a chip manufacturer, Intel Corporation's microprocessor group did not have direct interface with domestic power supply manufacturers. In 1993, I extended an invitation to Steve Goodfellow and Scott Huck of their Pentium team to attend APEC in San Diego where they could meet with industry leaders and academics responsible for design and development of the next generation of products. Domestic power supply manufacturers were not aware of the output voltage changes required for powering future desktop computer systems. It is sad to report that very few attendees of that Marketing Session knew what the Energy Star program was all about, no less 3.3 volt outputs for PC's. As a result of that eye opening experience, Intel has recognized the need for early interface with us in addition to their customer base, to address the challenge of meeting end user demands for higher performance with smaller packages and lower system costs. This year, at Don Staffiere's "Low Voltage Power, Who's In Charge?" RAP Session, Ed Stanford, Power Delivery Technologist of Intel, admitted that they "keep raising the bar--what are our limits?" With voltage requirements dropping below 1 volt within three to five years, we have our work cut out for ourselves. While Intel is being driven by Moore's Law, that calls for 0.6V at 290 amps within 10 years for high performance computers, we are being pressed to develop new capacitive and magnetic solutions to keep pace. Ed addressed DC resistance and inductance of the distribution as areas requiring close scrutiny. The current 1 gigaHertz CPU (mid range system) has a high toggle rate. We will be looking at DI/DT with 100's of amps per microsecond. He anticipates a challenge of removing the heat in a cost effective manner. Intel's participation at the APEC conference confirms the need for all of us to work together if we are to achieve producible, cost effective solutions to the technology demands of tomorrow. In my opinion the answer to the "who's in charge" question will be decided by our ability to continue to work together on these future specifications which may require some mutually acceptable deviations. While on the subject of RAP Sessions, let me not overlook the other two highly attended RAP Session topics: "Planar Magnetics: Hip or Hype" with Chuck Mullett as the moderator and "AC Versus DC for Back Up Power" moderated by Mark Jacobs. Our no videotaping or sound recording machine policy opened up some lively debate for all who participated in these Sessions.
Individuals attending this year's conference had the opportunity to attend 15 professional education seminars, 31 multi-speaker technical sessions, 12 vendor application seminars, three RAP Sessions, the Exhibit Hall, the 15th annual Micro Mouse competition and our Wednesday evening banquet held in the Disneyland Theme Park.
Although anyone can purchase copies of our Professional Education Seminar Workbooks and Conference Proceedings, failing to attend the conference precluded access to a wealth of information obtained from attending our RAP Sessions. Attendance at the conference enables you to sit alongside your peers, have a soft drink or a beer, listen in or question any of the RAP session panelists, and challenge statements made by others at these wide open forums.
Each of the three sponsoring organizations, IEEE PELS, IEEE IAS and the Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) conduct business meetings in conjunction with APEC. One such meeting, that had standing room only, was a report to the PSMA by Fred Lee on behalf of the Center for Power Electronic Systems (CPES). CPES is an alliance of 5 universities and over 90 companies whose mission is to provide research in the area of technological development in power electronics where member firms gain early access to intellectual property. For additional information on CPES, simply visit their web site.
The conference opened on Sunday morning with five of the 15, half day,
Professional Education Seminars being presented by seasoned industry and academia professionals. Prior to the conference, the committee selected 15 of the 29 proposals received which would appeal to the widest cross section of APEC attendees. With ongoing user demand for higher power densities, it was not surprising to find a "packed house" during both Dan Jitaru and Bruce Carsten's presentations on Monday morning. Attesting to the continuing popularity of the Professional Education Seminars, 390 engineers showed up to attend these tutorials.
Attendees at this year's conference came from over 24 foreign nations
representing every continent of the globe: Austria, Australia, Brazil,
Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Slovenija, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the UK. Many of these engineers were authors at APEC 2001. On behalf of the entire conference committee, we extend our sincere gratitude for their contributions to our success. Although we accepted 198 technical papers for APEC 2001, we were still unable to accommodate over 50% of the 435 received for consideration. Recognizing that challenge there has been discussion by the Steering Committee regarding another expansion of the technical program to offer six rather than five sessions in parallel. That decision will be made as the committee reviews the abstracts received for APEC 2002.
With 735 paid attendees, APEC's technical registration surpassed the 2000 record set for this segment of the conference. This total does not include booth staff who were granted access to the technical sessions. To expand the number of technical presentations, the Plenary Session was limited to three presentations that are vital to meeting some of our future cost and technology challenges. Close to 600 people attended the Plenary Session where Bill George, Senior Vice President and Chief Manufacturing and Technology Officer of ON Semiconductor, opened this session with a reference to the current energy crisis in California. His presentation was appropriately titled: "Power Management: Enabling Technology for Next Generation Electronic Systems." He was followed by past Conference Chairman Dong Tan, whose paper was titled: "Standardizing Specification Language: IEEE Standard 1515-2000." The object of this standards activity was to create an industry understanding of specifications with respect to test methods and measurements, not to establish the actual specification. Our final presentation, "Requirement for Robust Capacitors in High Density Power Conversion " was presented by co-author Ian W. Clelland of ITW Paktron. Ian concluded by stating that in order to achieve the required reliability levels for most applications, we must carefully select components that have a proven track record of both durability and reliability. By reducing the Plenary Session to three authors, we were able to add five additional four-paper Sessions on Monday afternoon.
Although there was no theme for APEC 2001, it was apparent that everyone was aware of the challenges being faced to provide low voltage outputs at higher currents in the next few years. Over 100 attendees listened to Bob Mammano's discussion of this topic as presented in the TI Exhibitor Seminar on Tuesday afternoon.
Another annual APEC highlight, the Micro Mouse competition, was very popular again this year. Over 150 people came to witness the contest in which 11 mice (and their handlers) representing Canada, Korea, Singapore and the United States were all eager to capture the "big cheese." The fastest run (10.82 seconds) and best score (13.52 seconds) were both achieved by "L.N.G." representing the Korean entry. Handler Oh Kil-young is a student at Hoseo University in Korea. He was also the winner of the 20th All Japan Micromouse contest held in Tokyo last year. Finishing in second and third place were Min 2 and Ning 2, two of the entries from Singapore. VI-Mouse was the first Micromouse entry representing Vicor Corporation in an APEC competition. Perhaps we will see other manufacturer entries in future contests.
During the seminars and technical sessions on Monday and Tuesday, Spousal arrangements Chair, Jane Wilson, hosted two breakfasts preceding the two tours into LA. On Monday's tour, every one of the 55 seats on the "I Love LA" motor coach tour were occupied. Although they did experience some rain, they did visit the renowned Rodeo Drive where they passed such business locations such as Adolfo, Hermes, Gucci and Cartier. Forty-one spouses took our Tuesday bus trip to the Getty Center where they explored the vast collection of European paintings, sculpture and decorative arts. The collection includes paintings by Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne and sculptures by Cellini, Bernini, Houdon and Canova.
I doubt that any of the 750 attendees who joined our private Wednesday
evening banquet will ever forget the magical setting of fantasy and fun as presented by Disney for our group in the Festival Arena. The menu included butternut squash soup, a salad containing mixed greens with walnuts and gorgonzola cheese followed by a choice of spinach stuffed chicken breast and delicately seasoned pork slices. While dining we had an unobstructed view of Disney cast members entertaining us with their dancing, juggling, fire eating and live music. After dinner we walked to the Tomorrowland area where we had unlimited access to several attractions including: Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Star Tours and Space Mountain. There were multiple areas to indulge ourselves on a wide variety of decadent desserts from cheese cake, lemon squares, double chocolate brownies to rich bread pudding and blueberry truffle. Disney characters mingled and posed for photo opportunities with our members.
Looking ahead, APEC 2002 will be held March 10-14 at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Dallas, Texas.
Larry Gilbert,
Local Arrangements and Publicity Chair,
APEC 2001
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