Building a Common Vision for the UK Microelectronics Design Research Community

This vision statement does not specifically address individual research topics but proposes how an existing UK infrastructure, which has widespread international recognition, can be used and enhanced to support the planned research in the UK academic community.

• World-class research into microelectronics design methods, or novel systems required to support world-class research, will increasingly involve multi-disciplinary teams. In many cases these teams will span more than one university and may require the active participation of an industrial collaborator.

• In order to be productive, UK academics need to have easy common access to diverse leading edge tools similar to those that are in use within the research and development groups of large multi-national companies. These tools have to accommodate flexible “algorithms to implementation” design flows including SoC, SIP, mixed-signal, integrated sensors, embedded processors and OS, reconfigurable systems, etc.

• Leveraging on its Europractice Software Service (the largest and most widely recognised scheme of this type in the world with ~550 European university institutes and ~50 leading European research laboratories as customers), the CCLRC/RAL Microelectronics Support Centre (MSC) has for many years provided a one-stop-shop tools, methodology and support service to UK academics in support of their research projects.

• The CCLRC/RAL Microelectronics Support Centre welcomes and endorses the initiative to instigate a long-term vision for UK microelectronics-based research and wishes to become actively involved in the planning and implementation of such a scheme. It is vital that the CCLRC/RAL MSC scheme already in use all UK universities actively engaged in this area evolves in anticipation of the emerging needs of this initiative. Such active involvement will enable the MSC scheme to continue to be dynamically tuned to the emerging needs of the UK research community.

• Although the existing CCLRC/RAL MSC scheme is primarily for academic-only research, well established mechanisms exist to accommodate collaborative research with industry on a case-by-case basis. These mechanisms could be readily extended to accommodate a specific UK industry-academic dimension which may form a part of this initiative. For example, a pool of extended use tokens enabling academic institutions to use their current software as part of a coordinated industrial collaboration could permit the existing academic infrastructure to be used in this extended UK programme.

Dr John A McLean

Head, Microelectronics Support Centre

Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Chilton Didcot OX11 0QX

Tel +44 1235 445276

Fax +44 1235 445546