ARTICLE DECEMBER 2001

MEDEA+ Forum 2001 wrap-up: "Innovation is the key to recovery"

In Amsterdam on December 06-07, over 200 MEDEA+ partners met for the first MEDEA+ Forum of the 8-year cooperative R&D programme that has started on January 1 this year.

"Opening the future roads of microelectronics". Under this headline Jean-Pierre Noblanc, Chairman of MEDEA+, proudly announced that a new body - the Scientific Committee - has been approved by the MEDEA+ board members, thus creating an expertise to advise the Board on technical benchmarking in the domain and to identify critical issues and crucial topics impacting future microelectronics development. They will be fully dedicated to long-term issues and strategies, thus contributing to maintain the MEDEA+ positioning as the leading European organisation in state-of-the-art microelectronic R&D cooperation.

Looking back at the dramatic decline of the world-wide semiconductor market this year, Noblanc - and other industry key speakers - were all convinced that R&D and innovation would function as growth engines for the recovery. Noblanc stated: "R&D funding continued strongly during the crisis" and he was confident that after recovery the market will provide end users with new and attractive electronic products.

All participants in the Forum Round Table agreed on this analysis. They also made it clear that the return to the long-term "two digit" growth path of microelectronics no longer depends alone on the capacities of individual companies. "In order to win, cooperation is absolutely mandatory", said Pasquale Pistorio, CEO of STMicroelectronics. "In this capital-intensive industry we must share resources and jointly reduce technological risks".

Jaap J. van Scheijen, Director ICT Ministry of Economic Affairs (NL), in his welcome speech, had already underlined the decisive role of partnerships to overcome Europe's traditional fragmentation: "Without the cooperation and the mutual trust that developed over the last 13 years in JESSI and MEDEA, the European microelectronics industry would not have achieved its present world-wide position", van Scheijen said. "European-wide market-oriented cooperation is a condition for public funding within the EUREKA frame".

Two keynote speeches on "the most exciting industry in the world"

Doug J. Dunn, President, CEO and Chairman of ASML, in his "Compete and Cooperate" keynote speech, took the audience on a fascinating tour through the history of the microelectronics industry, addressing then present issues.

He made it clear that the "big ticket, high risk business" of lithography is not only a key enabler for Electronics. Its success determines Europe's production skill, GDP growth and the wealth of its nations. "If we Europeans loose out in microelectronics, we will never get back into the fast race".

Doug Dunn's statement that "his industry is the most exciting industry in the world" could also have come from the other keynote speaker Eberhard Schmid,Vice President Automotive Electronics, Robert Bosch GmbH. His presentation "Trends and challenges in automotive electronics" highlighted essential aspects of ever new developments in microelectronic applications and features pertaining to the technical evolution in automotive electronics, but also to highest quality and reliability requirements in car systems.

The technical and commercial ingenuity in this domain was underlined by Schmid's showing of Europe's year 2000 market share ranking of semiconductor suppliers to automotive: no less than four European companies rank among the top five [source: Strategy Analytics].

Thirty eight MEDEA+ projects successfully launched deliver already first results

In line with the 2 keynote presentations on European strengths in specific technologies and applications sectors, the 2 MEDEA+ Vice-Chairmen explained the challenges and early achievements in their microelectronics Applications and Technologies sub-programmes. Furthermore 4 Project Leaders presented the first results of their MEDEA+ projects.

In his overview of the 22 MEDEA+ Applications projects in the Communication, Terminals, Automotive, Smart Cards and Design work areas, Ben Waumans stressed the substantial communication between many of these projects and the important fact that several projects are already heavily involved in standardisation.

The 7 System on Silicon Design projects aim at increasing sophistication and productivity in design tools to overtake the growing complexity in application systems. In this domain the European-wide EDA roadmapping activities that were started during the MEDEA programme will also be continued.

Peter Tischer in his Technologies sub-programme overview grouped the R&D challenges of the 16 projects into the application driven requirements for special enabling technologies and design methodologies and into the ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) driven "next generation" technologies challenges. The focus is on large projects involving the key European players. Goals of the ITRS driven projects are in line with the ITRS time scale. Most of the labelled projects already delivered first results.

His analysis of the tendencies in the Integrated Circuit Industry supported the general conclusion of this year's Forum: Innovation is the key to recovery. Companies accelerate process development in spite (or because) of the industry's downturn to improve their competitive position. And the build-up of 300mm fabs is continued to reduce production cost.

"Partnership is what MEDEA+ is about". The 4 MEDEA+ Project Leaders, when introducing the first achievements of their projects, underlined that this observation holds true for the work between industry, research institutes and universities within the consortia, and for links between them.

And, in pursuing its mission "Europe to become a leader in System Innovation on Silicon for the e-economy", MEDEA+ is also intensifying the cooperation with other European hi-tech R&D programmes, especially with ITEA, PIDEA, and in the preparation of EC-FP6.

Developing and defending Europe's interests and competitiveness through the most advanced R&D in microelectronics is the objective of MEDEA+. The annual MEDEA+ Forum with highly influential participants from Companies, Public Authorities, Universities, Institutes and the Press is the ideal environment to be informed first-hand on the challenges and the progress of this decisive industry.