NEWSLETTER JULY / AUGUST 2001 The importance of Universities and Institutes in the MEDEA+ Programme
As the acceleration of technological innovations poses ever greater challenges to research in microelectronics, co-operation between industry, universities and institutes must be intensified. Challenges of microelectronics research To maintain their global competitiveness, European microelectronics companies must be able to provide customers with the best technologies and products available anywhere in the world at competitive cost. But, planning an advanced research programme in microelectronics is a challenge in itself, due to the almost unpredictable speed of innovation in technology, design and markets. The International Technology Roadmap for Semicondutors (ITRS) sets the technological pace for microelectronics until 2014. The number of bits/transistors and the complexity of logic functions/chips will continue to increase dramatically through new generations of semiconductor devices and design methodologies. As this pace keeps accelerating with an unprecedented number of distinct difficult technical challenges, industry and institutes in Europe have to find innovative solutions to stay leading-edge in technology and applications. In pursuing its objective of ensuring Europe's technological and industrial competitiveness in microelectronics through advanced co-operative Research & Development, MEDEA+ stimulates intensive trans-border co-operation between industrial companies of all sizes and research institutes and universities. The participation and support of the most qualified European institutes and universities for the MEDEA+ programme is therefore perceived as essential by all industrial partners. Laboratories and industry complement one another In industry innovation usually happens in small increments. Radical technological substitution of products or processes is the exception. Revolutionary technological breakthroughs can, however, be expected from advanced ?academic" research in Institutes and Universities. Combining the two complementary approaches and the potentials of industrial and academic research in efficient and stronger research networks is therefore ?the order of the day". It is one of the key challenges the 8 years MEDEA+ programme is facing - and, as the programme's 1st and 2nd call statistics show, has already started to meet. This desired skill balance is clearly visible in the partner mix of the 40 labelled MEDEA+ projects: In comparison with the MEDEA programme, where Universities and Institutes accounted for a mere 23% of all 155 active project partners, in the newly launched MEDEA+ programme with some 230 partners, Universities by themselves account already for 23% and Institutes represent another 8% of the partners. Not only has there been a strong growth in the relative and absolute number of participating Universities and Institutes in MEDEA+, but the number of countries with public or private laboratories participating in this new EUREKA programme has also increased. New academic partners to team up with industry and foster European R&D in microelectronics are for instance DIMES (The Netherlands), Athen's University (Greece), the National Center for Microelectronics (Spain), the University of Minho (Portugal) and the Technical University Vienna (Austria). Why do universities and institutes participate in MEDEA+ projects? Institutes and universities contribute most to advanced research for CAD tool development and for silicon process development. In CAD tool development, the focus is on system-level design, high level heterogeneous mixed-signal and RF design, IP verification and design flow for optimal re-use, back-end physical design and design for testability. In process development, institutes and universities participate in new process modules and "option debugging" when different technological possibilities exist: laboratory work is the most efficient approach to these questions, since companies themselves cannot explore all the possible options in parallel. In silicon process development their contribution is mostly on simulation and modeling. Participation of universities in MEDEA+ helps to align the work of university research on medium and long term market opportunities. It also facilitates and accelerates the transfer of technology and leads to far better understanding, by professors and students, of the requirements for success under the constraints of international competition and cooperation. This can also foster the education and training schemes to help solving one of the most severe problems for the years to come: the lack of skilled personnel in research and development. Last not least, active participation in public-private partnership programmes like MEDEA+ allows universities and institutes to bridge financial gaps as the capital spending necessary for basic R&D in enabling technologies is more and more out of reach for many academic budgets. Our goal: Contributing to the European Research Area Research and technology have a decisive and positive impact on the development of new knowledge and hence on the creation of wealth and jobs for Europe and the world. The MEDEA+ management welcomes the initiative of the European Commissioner Busquin to concentrate efforts and create a real European Research Area and hopes it will succeed. This will actively and creatively contribute to the elimination of barriers that still prevent European industry, universities and institutes from effectively working together in the area of microelectronics research and technology. We are ready to participate in any action towards this goal and bring our experience of trans-border co-operation, in concertation with the European Commission, the Eureka organisation and the National governments. | |||
