The show began 15 years ago and it was called the EDA & Test-Taiwan or EDA&T-Taiwan for short. Eyeing Taiwan's young but exhilarating chip industry, the new show was striving to capture the soul of up-and-coming EDA business in Asia.

But as it turned out, for EDA, like rest of the world, things in Asia were a bit more complicated. The EDA&T-Taiwan show, however, kept going for years while expanding its fold to other key industries.

Seven years ago, it added Embedded System Conference (ESC)-Taiwan track in its portfolio. The embedded colors not only added depth to the products lineup, but they also gave the show a richer identity.

While the ESC-Taiwan track complemented the software side of the show by bringing in firms like Wind River Systems Inc., it also attracted processor guys like Intel Corp. and Atmel Corp. to the show floor, thus adding the hardware dimension.

Diverse product landscape
The evolution continues this year with show organizer eMedia Asia Ltd—also the publisher of EE Times-Asia—renaming the Taiwan show as International IC-Taiwan or IIC-Taiwan.

The scope of the show will represent the diverse product landscape that Taiwan now epitomizes, with a supply chain that encompasses design, test, software, manufacturing and packaging services.

The EDA&T track has folded into a new and much larger event that covers all aspects of high-value electronics design. The event features new exhibitors, new technologies, a focus on green power and the very latest in high-definition from HDMI.

And IIC-Taiwan is going to be more than just a showcase of IC solutions for system, sub-system and embedded designers. The show is being co-located with the Semicon Taiwan to link the IC design value chain to equipment, material and manufacturing solutions, thus creating a practical manifestation of the popular design-to-manufacturing theme.

Moreover, on the standards domain, IIC-Taiwan is being co-located with the HDMI Developers Conference, which will present to CE and PC design engineers technical know-how and best practices in HDMI implementation.

This year's show is a mix of evolution—that in some ways reflects Taiwan's own ascent in the high-value electronics design world—and some interesting new ideas and platforms. When the show opens on Sept. 9 at the Taipei World Trade Center with a new identity, it is hoped that more options and greater learning for Taiwan design engineers will come about.

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