IBM and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks cooperate to promote semiconductor foundry services in Asia Pacific
(Top News, 23 Jul 2007 )
IBM and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) have announced an agreement to promote semiconductor foundry services in the Asia Pacific region, by leveraging IBM's world-renowned semiconductor technologies.
IBM offers a range of leading edge and industry-standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), silicon germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS, and radio frequency CMOS (RFCMOS) technologies. The world-class foundry technologies, combined with the manufacturing flexibility and a wide array of value-added services can help electronic companies and manufacturers of different sizes to improve their productivity and competitive advantage.
Working with HKSTP, IBM's foundry technologies and intellectual property (IP) become more accessible to regional technology start-ups, fabless companies and multinational chip design teams through multi-project wafer (MPW) services and low-volume production (LVP). IBM's semiconductor technologies have been applied to chip design for a variety of applications including game consoles, wireless devices, multimedia consumer electronics, communication and networking equipments and microprocessors.
The accuracy of circuit modeling, the range of technology nodes available, the manufacturing quality and IBM's technology leadership enables clients to develop high performance design, accelerate their time to market, reduce development risk, lower development costs, and improve return on investment.
"IBM is dedicated to helping innovative organizations of all sizes design and prototype high-performance chips at a lower cost. IBM's fabrication service enables prototyping through MPW and LVP which support clients with production needs at lower volume. The cooperation with HKSTP marks a significant step to help smaller-sized and start-up technology developers to leverage IBM advanced semiconductor technologies to enhance their product portfolio and grow their business," said David Faircloth, Vice President, Asia Pacific, IBM Global Engineering Solutions (GES).
"Companies nowadays are increasingly collaborating with a greater ecosystem of technology expertise to attain a level of innovation that creates a competitive edge. IBM is the innovator's innovator. We aim to help clients innovate through collaboration. With our deep technology and engineering assets in a way that complement client's internal R&D capabilities, IBM is well positioned to help HKSTP and its clients embrace this model of collaborative innovation," said Dominic Tong, General Manager, IBM China/Hong Kong Limited.
"IBM GES can help empower these companies to innovate with the full spectrum of IBM leadership in intellectual property, research, development, manufacturing, process capabilities and systems to embrace collaborative innovation," added Faircloth.
For more than four decades, IBM has been transforming the semiconductor industry with world-renowned research and development breakthroughs in semiconductor design and manufacturing, leading the industry in the number of patents received for each of the past 14 years and investing over US$5 billion annually on ongoing research.
HKSTP's Integrated Circuit Design Centre offers a wide range of IP services, including licensing, integration and verification. Most notably, HKSTP provides a sound legal framework for semiconductor intellectual property development to protect the technological investment for the integrated circuit (IC) design companies and to enhance the IC industry development. The test development and small scale manufacturing services in HKSTP enables fabless semiconductor design houses to conduct low-volume production cost-effectively and accelerate time to market.
"Since its establishment in 2001, the HKSTP has been dedicated to IC and associated SIP development by forming strong alliances with key IT vendors, professional IC associations as well as leading universities," said S S Lee, Chief Executive Officer of HKSTP.
"The semiconductor industry has been growing rapidly in Asia resulting in many IC design activities shifting from the US and Europe to lower cost countries in the region and to get closer to the markets. The cooperation with IBM will enable us to provide small and medium-sized technology developers with the most advanced platform of technologies and one-stop-shop service from design, MPW to LVP governed by global best practices and the rule of IP protection law," added Lee.
To help HKSTP on foundry engagement and to provide necessary technical support, IBM will arrange technical training for the HKSTP team. HKSTP will provide MPW and LVP service for regional demands and first-line technical support to its clients. To promote IBM's semiconductor foundry technologies, HKSTP and IBM will also jointly conduct seminars and roadshows across the region, as well as setting up a portal for technical enquiries.
