Dr. Nicky Lu
Chairman & Founder, Etron Technology
Executive Board Director, TSIA
About
Dr. Lu holds a BSEE from National Taiwan University (now endowed as Distinguished Research Chair Professor and Outstanding Alumnus) and an MSEE and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He joined IBM Research Headquarters and, after seven years, was promoted to Program Manager in the CEO's office. His numerous semiconductor and integrated circuit (IC) inventions led IBM to achieve the world's first 8-inch wafer fab and fastest 4Mb DRAM.
In 1991, he founded Etron Technology, Inc., and collaborated with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and TSMC to pioneer Taiwan's first self-developed advanced sub-micron IC technology, which realized Taiwan's first 8-inch wafer fab and mass production of DRAM, Logic, and SRAM within three years, a world record, attracting US $16B investments to Taiwan Semiconductor Industry. In 2000, he pioneered Known-Good-Die (KGD) silicon technology and products, thus stimulating and leading the "IC Heterogeneous Integration (HI) Methodology and Era," which complements IC Moore's Law growth and won Intel's Preferred Quality Supplier Award. These contributions have established an essential technology basis for nurturing the recent booming AI era. Dr. Lu has obtained 304 global patents, including 84 US patents.
In his dedicated career to the IC and semiconductor industry, Dr. Lu founded several successful IC companies born from technical innovations and has served as Chair, Chief Technology Leader, or Co-Founder. He has been honorably elected as the Chair of TSIA (Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association), WSC (World Semiconductor Council), GSA (Global Semiconductor Alliance), and AITA (AI-on-Chip Taiwan Alliance). He is an IEEE Fellow, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).