Special Day on pan-European Co-operation and Technology Transfer
Zakopane, Poland, 28 August 1996

Abstract. The needs of the microelectronics technology transfer in the form of the ASIC develpoment for the SME are presented. The activity in this field in Europe and in Poland are shortly described. Finally, the organization of the Support Center for Microelectronics Application and the first experience are given.

The microelectronics technology transfer in the form of the ASIC development for SMEs, which is widely applied in Europe, has in our opinion at least two goals:

• activation of the SME potential in the national economy,
• gaining additional space for the microelectronics application expansion.

The specific character of the microelectronics application in SME is based on:

• the introduction of the microelectronics application into particular fields of the economy (SME) on the much grater scale than previously; and it gives
• better economical results for the enterprise,
• possibility of the intellectual property protection of the particular application solutions.

The better economical results for enterprises in case of ASIC application arise from the savings in comparison with discrete solutions, because of miniaturization, smaller power consumption and better reliability. The copying of the ASIC is much more difficult and expensive.

In reality, customers of the ASICs Support Center are usually the people, who cannot organize themselves the design, prototyping and manufacturing processes. The reason of such inability could be lack of competence (in case of all non-microelectronic enterprises, not particularly SMEs) as well as economical reasons (in case of smaller enterprises).

Well known are [e.g. 1,2] the activity of the EMAC (European Microelectronics Application Competence) and numerous actions undertaken by ESPRIT, JESSI and national programs in Europe in favour of simplifying microelectronics technology transfer [3,4,5].

European trend, mentioned above, was adopted by the East and Central European countries. For many of them it created the chance for continuing the research and applications of microelectronics better corresponding to the economical scale of these countries, than microelectronics of standard IC s (i.e. standard microprocessors and memories).

The Institute of Electron Technology in Warsaw, the largest institute working in the field of microelectronics in Poland, being the part of the Scientific and Production Center of Semiconductors (since 1970 up to 1990) designed about 200 SSI, MSI and LSI integrated circuits, that were afterwards manufactured by TEWA factory belonging to the same Center.

After free market economy was introduced in Poland the Scientific and Production Center of Semiconductors and TEWA factory went bankrupt. The institute adapted itself in a better way to the new economical conditions, seeking its chance in the ASICs [5,6].

For complete paper, either consult the Proceedings of the Special Day or drop an e-mail to authors.