BENEFIT Panel on
Systems Engineering in CEE countries
EMSYS'96, Berlin, 23-25 Sept. 1996
© BENEFIT
Development of the information technologies has been ever the
expressive influence into economic and social life. Its apply
to Central Europe countries too, among to the Slovakia with extensive
economical and political reforms. The former state policy in researche
and development was dominated by a very strong embargo on high
technology transfer from the western countries. The domestic production
and cooperation with eastern block countries of microelectronics
components, systems and software development too was a necessity.
The great changes towards the market economy have accompanied
by the collapse many of the traditional state-owned big companies.
Due to an open market, lack of the investment funds has been rapidly
reduced the volume of the industrial production mainly in the
electronics area. In the past few years most of the research institutes
associated with various branches of industry have been closed.
On the other side the researche and intellectual potential have
been transfered to a lot of new small and medium size production
companies. Most of them now have a very good commercial collaborations
with fereign companies. Today situation is similar in Slovakia
and in Czech republic too.
The research and development activities in electronics and information technologies in Czechoslovakia 1989 ago have been concentrated in two big companies TESLA and ZPA with approximately 30 various production enterprises (70 thousand employers), several reasearche institutes, Academy of Sciences (in Prague and Bratislava) and (6) technical universities. The research and development projects were controlled and financed by government. The planes were coordinated with respects to foreign collaborations mainly to institutes and producers from eastern block. The reasearche and development projects in microelectronics were concentrated arround the TESLA Piestany, silicon foundry in Slovakia and TESLA Roznov in Czech Republic.
The most research and development projects were solved in wide collaboration among the reaserche institute VUST Prague, Slovak Technical University Bratislava and Slovak Academy of Sience.
The effort to reach the self-sufficient in electronic systems
was culminated in production of many products such computers and
control systems for industry automation as. The level 2.5 um CMOS
technology (1990) have been used in production of VLSI ICs with
complexity to 100 thousand transistors per chip. It is possible
to mention the production of 8-bit one-chip microcomputer in 1984,
CCD image sensor for TV application in 1985, PC-XT from own microelectronics
components in 1988, 32-bit RISC microprocessor in 1990. The big
part of research activities were oriented to the development of
the software tools for many type of applications, including software
for CAD and CAE. Large researche capacities were concentrated
to development of the medium size computers (SMEP) and software
tools for them (production of VAX11/780 in VUVT Zilina in 1989).
The research and development activities in electronic systems are concentrated at technical universieties and reaserche institrutes af the Slovak academie of Sience. They are fully or partially funded by the goverment. Thanks to many programs of European Community they can keep the up to date some technology level.
The research and education activities in microelectronics in Slovakia
are represented by the Department of Microelectronics, Faculty
of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of Slovak
Technical University in Bratislava. This Department is the largest
of this type in Slovakia (Czech Republic including) and its activities
cover a wide spectrum of microelectronics technology from VLSI
and ASIC design, through fabrication lines based on thin film
technology and 1]m lithography to sensorics, micromechanics and
optoelectronics. Since '90 there are educated and trained ASIC
designers. In the field of IC design also the Department of Informatics
is active especially in digital systems formal specification,
verification and design method and tools. The designers have access
to following software tools: Synopsis, CADENCE DFW II, SOLO 1400,
CHAMELEON and HSPICE. They are involved in a few international
projects within ESPRIT (ATSEC) and COPERNICUS (DARTS, EUROEAST,
UBISTA, SISPAS). The FEI STU is a member of EUROCHIP.
The reasearche activities in system engineering are represented
by the Institute of Computer Systems the Slovak Academy of Science.
Their reasearche projects are oriented to parallel and distributed
information processing and design of information system elements
and their technological implementations. The activities the Department
of Design and Diagnostics of Digital Structures are concentrated
towards test pattern generation and fault simulation algorithms
for digital structures and towards to design for testability approaches
and BIST design techniques. These task have been solved also as
international projects within the COPERNICUS (FUTEG, UBISTA) and
ESPRIT (ATSEC) projects.
Most of the big state enterprises were transformed to many small national companies and also subsidiaries of international companies with different forms of ownership. Their activities are concentrated to software and hardware as well. Beside them exist the several big companies also with manufacture in electronics (telecom equipments, TV sets, control and measurement systems for industry automation).
To characterizing of today situation in production of information systems is necessary to mention:
Main application areas for information systems are:
Which microprocessors are used in own products? There are
only historical preferences to Intel microprocessors and one chip
microcomputers. But also are used components from Motorola, AD,
TI, Philips, Siemens, FPGAs from Xilinx, one chip microcomputers
from Microchip and Atmel, microprocessors V25, V40 from NEC, etc.
The informations concern to consumption volume of the components
are unknown.
The Open Microprocessor system Initiative is the remarkable attempt
to increase the effitient in wide application areas of cost-effective
microprocessor systems. The role of our researche and development
capacities may be active in this process. But it is necessery
to win the detailed informations concerned to all projects of
witch the OMI consists.
I would like to acknowledge the contribution from Dr. D. Donoval from Dept. of Microelectronic FEI STU Bratislava and Dr. E. Gramatova from Institute of Computer Science.