Annual report 2000 - Europractice

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EUROPRACTICE IC service The right cocktail of ASIC Services EUROPRACTICE IC Service offers you a proven route to ASICs that features: • Low-cost ASIC prototyping • Flexible access to silicon capacity for small and medium volume production quantities • Partnerships with leading world-class foundries • Wide choice of IC technologies • Distribution and full support of high-quality cell libraries and design kits for the most popular CAD tools • Netlist-to-Layout service for deep-submicron technologies • Front-end ASIC design through Alliance Partners Industry is rapidly discovering the benefits of using the EUROPRACTICE IC service to help bring new product designs to market quickly and cost-effectively. The EUROPRACTICE ASIC route supports especially those companies who don’t need always the full range of services or high production volumes. Those companies will gain from the flexible access to silicon prototype and production capacity at leading foundries, design services, high quality support and manufacturing expertise that includes IC manufacturing, packaging and test. This you can get all from EURO- PRACTICE IC service, a service that is already established for more than 5 years in the market. The EUROPRACTICE IC Services are offered by the following centers : • IMEC, Leuven (Belgium) • Fraunhofer-Institut, Integrierte Schaltungen (FhG-IIS), Erlangen (Germany) • Nordic VLSI ASA, Trondheim (Norway) • Delta, Hoersholm (Denmark) The EUROPRACTICE initiative EUROPRACTICE was launched by the European Commission (DGIII) in October 1995 to help companies improve their competitive position in world markets by adopting ASIC, Multi-Chip Module (MCM) or Microsystems solutions in the products they manufacture. The programme helps reduce the perceived risks and costs associated with these technologies by offering potential users a range of services, including initial advice and ongoing support, reduced entry costs and a clear route to chip manufacture and product supply. The European Commission further funds the EURO- PRACTICE IC Service under the IST programme.
Foreword The EUROPRACTICE IC Service has got its place into the market and is recognised as a high-quality service for ASIC prototyping and small to medium volume production. The IC Service is offered by a consortium of four partners, namely IMEC (Belgium), FhG-IIS (Germany), Nordic VLSI (Norway) and DELTA (Denmark). The year <strong>2000</strong> was a special year indeed for everybody, also for the IC service. The IC Service has been developed to a real one-stop shop service. You just have to interface with only one of the partners in order to receive the full range of services. Especially if you only need ASIC production from time to time we offer you a flexible but fully supported solution. Flexibility is the key word. That is why we offer a wide range of technologies ranging from 2 micron to 0.13 micron covering CMOS, BiCMOS, Rad Hard BiCMOS, High voltage and SiGe. That is also why we distribute and support a large set of high-quality cell libraries and design kits. That is also why we offer the full range of packaging solutions (up to BGA600). Flexibility is needed to offer you the best choice at the lowest cost. The ITRS roadmap shows a tremendous evolution in ASIC technologies, a new generation every 3 years and even accelerated. The costs for a mask set and prototype engineering run for the newest technologies is ever increasing to more than 500,000 euro. In order to offer “low-cost” prototyping and to secure access to the very deep submicron technologies, partnerships with the leading foundries need to be established. We are proud to announce that we have been able to extend the current agreement with UMC, one of the leading foundries world-wide, and Virtual Silicon, one of the leading library (eSilicon libraries) vendors world-wide, in order to offer a fully supported prototyping and volume production service in 0.18 and 0.13 micron CMOS technologies. As such EUROPRACTICE is the first MPW service in the world offering access to 0.13 micron. In the year <strong>2000</strong> : • 473 ASIC designs have been prototyped on MPW runs, 274 for educational purposes and 199 for industrial purposes. • the small volume service activity increased substantially : 117 projects have been booked from customers from 19 countries and 11,150,000 components have to be delivered. This shows that more customers are aware of the small volume possibilities. The number of projects increased by 20%, but the number of components increased by about 400%. • the customer base increased again with customers from Canada, China and Egypt. Customers accessing the IC Service are from 40 different countries (see list on the last pages), which proves that the service is known world-wide. • our Alliance Partner Network extended to 19 partners. Having nice results is only possible by offering a high quality service that includes a large technology portfolio and a good support service. It is our goal to improve the service by introducing new technologies and new solutions to you. I hope we have the opportunity to meet you in the future and to discuss you future projects. Dr. C. Das Chairman EUROPRACTICE IC Service IMEC (Belgium) 1
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