Automation of routine chip design tasks: New JR Centre at FH Kärnten

23.05.2023: In colloquial language, the term "digital" often has a modern and "analogue" an old-fashioned connotation. But in fact, digitalisation would not even be possible without analogue chips!

"The world has been digitalised, but it is still analogue by nature, as we humans are," explains Santiago Sondón, Head of the new Josef Ressel Centre for System-on-Chip Design Automation. "The intelligence in our mobile phones, cars and smart homes requires technology that connects these digital brains to the real world, just as we do with our senses. The electronic circuits that implement this function are called analogue." But the production of these analogue chips in the modern semiconductor industry, unlike the production of digital circuits, is still hardly automated, which means that engineers in this field have to spend a lot of time on routine tasks.

Head of Centre Sondón and his team, supported by commercial partner Infineon Technologies Austria AG, have therefore set themselves the goal of automating the development process of analogue circuits and optimising it through simulation with computer-aided design (CAD) tools: This shall allow experts to invest the time saved by automating the production of basic integrated circuit blocks in innovative development tasks instead - and that not only reduces manufacturing costs and strengthens the semiconductor industry, but also promotes future innovative, high-quality and environmentally friendly electronic systems that will benefit our daily lives as well as small businesses, universities and universities of applied sciences!

Pictured from left to right: CDG Vice President and BMAW Head of Department Ulrike Unterer, Member of Kärntner Landtag Luca Burgstaller, FH Kärnten Research Director Claudia Pacher, Head of Centre Santiago Sondón, Senior Vice President Stefan Berger from Infineon Technologies Austria AG, and FH Kärnten Managing Director Siegfried Spanz.

Further information on the JR Centre

Press release (FH Kärnten)

 

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