Jan 29 2008
AMI Semiconductor, a leading designer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art mixed-signal and digital products for the automotive, medical, industrial, aerospace, and high-voltage communication markets, has entered into a new two-year collaboration program with IMEC - Europe's leading independent research center in the field of nanoelectronics – to develop AMI Semiconductor’s future Smart Power Technologies.
Under the terms of the agreement, AMIS will develop critical and novel Smart Power processes and devices in IMEC's advanced 200mm facilities, and use IMEC’s know-how and experience in deep submicron process technology. A team of on-site AMIS engineers will jointly work with IMEC engineers in the IMEC premises in Leuven, Belgium, in close collaboration with the AMIS Smart Power team in Oudenaarde, Belgium.
Christine King, CEO of AMIS states that IMEC is the right partner to support their future Smart Power development programs: "This collaborative agreement will allow us to develop our next generation I4T Smart Power Technology platform while protecting our differentiating and critical IP. IMEC is the ideal collaborative partner because of its advanced infrastructure, its outstanding engineering competences, and its business model. Furthermore, being close to our Smart Power team in Oudenaarde is an important asset".
AMIS has collaborated with IMEC on a number of developments during the last twenty years. The new agreement takes the relationship between the two companies to a new level by moving, for the first time, part of the AMIS advanced technology R&D into IMEC's own premises. I4T will be the fourth generation of the AMIS Smart Power Technology platform. This platform allows the integration of high voltage and power functions with dense logic, processors and memories into a single device. The I4T platform will enable complex system-on-chip (SoC) Smart Power systems for next generation automotive, power regulation, and communications applications.
Gilbert Declerck, the IMEC CEO states: "IMEC is happy to strengthen, with this cooperation agreement, the activities of AMIS in the Flemish region of Belgium. The new project with AMIS fits IMEC's CMORE program, targeted at R&D for new fabrication processes and device technologies focusing on performance and new functions, rather than further scaling of transistors.”
CMORE makes use of IMEC's state-of-the art 200mm processing facility with a 130/90nm CMOS platform technology. As part of CMORE program IMEC is developing, amongst other projects, SiGe-based integrated MEMS processes and devices, thin film technology for integrated passive components and submicron SOI- (silicon on insulator-) based photonic devices.