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Report of the ESD Best Practice Dissemination Forum
November 1997
Date: 26 November 1997
Location: Brussels
_________________________________________________________________________ATTENDEES
François Baillieu CCIP, TTN
Claude Berthier LETI, TTN
Massimo Bombana ITALTEL
Bruno Bonati CSATA, TTN
Tiziana Dell’Orto CRR, TTN
Bart De Mey IMEC, TTN
Tony Dent Iprias
Franco Di Cicco COREP, TTN
Sebastien Dominguez ARAMIS, TTN
Carlo Donzella Bytes & Rights
Gregory Doumenis Solinet, PODSIM-ESD
Herbert Grünbacher TUW, EARNEST
Rainer Janowicz ECSI, EARNEST
Martin Jones Arlington, ESD
Hilary Kahn UM, EARNEST
Juergen Kreyssig, Rapporteur IAM, TTN
Ian Pierson Iprias
Robert Raschhofer Linz, TTN
Thomas Reichert GEMAC, TTN
Teresa Riesgo UPM, EARNEST
Rainer Schulze Nord-Micro, ADTV-ESD
Hannu Tenhunen KTH, EARNEST
Alain Vachoux EPFL, EARNEST
Peter Baur EC, PROSOMA
David Guedj EC, ESD & FUSE
Mike Newman EC, ESD
ContentS
Introduction and Background
EARNEST: Overall project presentation - R. Janowicz, EARNEST, ECSI
EARNEST: Organisation of the ESD workshops - T. Riesgo, EARNEST, UPM
EARNEST: Web page and CD-ROM - H. Gruenbacher, EARNEST, TU Wien
ESD Best Practice: Demonstration Project SEED - M. Bombana, Itatel, Italy
ESD Best Practice: Application Experiment ADTV - R. Schulze, Nord Micro AG, Germany
ESD Best Practice: Application Experiment PODSIM - G. Doumenis, Solinet, Germany
ESD Best Practice: Demonstration Project DEMOMAG - Teresa Riesgo, UPM, Spain
EARNEST: Reflection - Hilary Kahn, EARNEST, UM
PROSOMA - Peter Baur, EC
First Users Action, FUSE - Juergen Kreyssig, IAM FuE, Germany
Discussion and Conclusions
This workshop held in Brussels on 26 November 1997, was attended primarily by Electronic System Design (ESD) project participants, FUSE Technology Transfer Nodes (TTNs), and members of the EC team involved in the PROSOMA action. The objectives were to inform about Dissemination Activities performed under the ESD Best Practice action, discuss how they were implemented and carried out, and reflect on future initiatives to improve take-up actions such as ESD or FUSE.
Over the past years the semiconductor industry has experienced a broadening in the use of Electronic System Design tools and methodologies. In order to keep pace with the ever increasing demand, driven by the customers, for more functionality at lower costs and higher performances, the Electronics Industry needs to establish best practice in the way it introduces new tools and methods and manages technology take-up projects.
This Forum focused on the experience of the EARNEST dissemination project and presented some examples with a selected number of ESD projects. The PROSOMA action was presented to address dissemination through the collection of results and a Panel Session devoted to Future initiatives concluded this Forum. Participants were invited to make short presentations on their current experiences and future needs, guided by the topics proposed for discussion such as:
EARNEST: Overall project presentation
- R. Janowicz, EARNEST, ECSI
EARNEST, the "European Awareness Reflection Network for Electronic System Design Standards" - is a European-wide Dissemination Activity aimed at the promotion of the awareness of existing Best Practice tools, methods and standards, in the domain of Electronic System Design (ESD).
EARNEST provides information, advice and promotion of the collected and processed material in order to ensure that European companies, varying from large multi-nationals to SMEs, have appropriate access to Best Practice experience and standards related information.
EARNEST covers a wide part of Europe with the following partners:
ECSI, France
EPFL, Switzerland
KTH, Sweden
TUW, Austria
UM, England
UPM, Spain
The main events organised by EARNEST with ESD projects have been:
ESD Best Practice Workshop in Madrid, Spain
ESD Best Practice Workshop in Stockholm, Sweden
ESD Best Practice Workshop in Manchester, England
ESD Best Practice Dissemination Forum in Brussels, Belgium
Reports about all three workshops have been distributed together with videos recorded during the dissemination events. As summaries of the workshops, beside a video, a comprehensive Web page and a CD-ROM with the complete information collected and selected videos of the workshops are available.
EARNEST: Organisation of the ESD workshops
- T. Riesgo, EARNEST, UPM
The three workshops organised by EARNEST have been used to disseminate the ESD programme itself and best practice project results to companies and academia outside the country the project partners are coming from.
Overall, 115 attendees have been at the three workshops in Madrid, Stockholm, Manchester. Looking at all three workshops, it has been difficult to address non local organisations. The reason is that the projects have not been grouped with respect to a common topic, but according to their end date, to allow the companies an early final evaluation.
In addition to the presentation of the positive experiences the companies gained during the projects, the presentations have been recorded as video to allow a wider dissemination of the project results.
- H. Gruenbacher, EARNEST, TU Wien
Beside the wider dissemination of the project results via videos, a comprehensive WWW database has been implemented, which is also available as CD-ROM copy.
The WWW pages and the CD-ROM include an introduction to the EARNEST project itself, links to experts in the area of electronic system design, very suitable introductions to e.g. HDL languages and test standards, copies of the slides used during the project presentations and short videos that have been recorded during the presentations. They give a short introduction to the ESD projects.
ESD Best Practice: Demonstration Project SEED
- M. Bombana, Itatel, Italy
SEED is a demonstration project aiming to improve the design efficiency of mixed hardware/software components. The prototype software that has been used within this demonstration project is the hardware/software environment TOSCA (Tools for software/hardware co-design automation).
The tool allows the designer to specify and bind different parts of electronic design to hardware or software units. Specific functions to explore alternative solutions are supplied as well as cost estimations using a "what-if" analysis strategy.
The prototype tool has been successfully integrated into the Mentor design environment and has been tested by the company Itatel S.A., Italy, to design a new version of a component of the UT100 telephone system.
Main lessons learnt during the project have been:
ESD Best Practice: Application Experiment ADTV
- R. Schulze, Nord Micro AG, Germany
During the Application Experiment ADTV, NORD-MICRO AG, Germany, introduced a suitable design methodology and new tools to be able to design FPGAs within the company based on a VHDL design methodology. The task of the Application Experiment was to re-target the logic of an existing ASIC into a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), because the fabrication of the ASIC had been discontinued by the foundry.
The device is used to support a microprocessor by controlling all input/output functions in a digital flight controller. The main functionality of the device is a sequencer with a firmware program that is held in an external PROM. The complexity is about 4000 gates in a 100 pin package.
The main objectives of NORD-MICRO AG within this Application Experiment have been the selection of a suitable FPGA vendor for the application based on a market survey, to establish VHDL as design methodology within the company, to get the capability to use VHDL to describe and simulate FPGAs, to use VHDL to write suitable behavioural test benches to verify FPGAs, and to improve the design efficiency by using VHDL guidelines especially developed for NORD-MICRO AG.
Main lessons learnt during the project have been:
ESD Best Practice: Application Experiment PODSIM
- G. Doumenis, Solinet, Germany
PODSIM is an application experiment, where the company SOLINET, Germany, has applied new methods and used new tools for its Electronics System Design process. PODSIM focused on the application of best practice methods and tools for the design of advanced electronic systems in the telecommunications area.
The application experiment concerns the implementation of a telecommunications test system, applying novel design procedures. The specific production target concerns the redesign of an ISDN test system for advanced test equipment, supporting multiple S2M links and ATM functionality over these S2M links.
Main lessons learnt during the project have been:
ESD Best Practice: Demonstration Project DEMOMAG
- Teresa Riesgo, UPM, Spain
DEMOMAG is a Demonstration Project in the area of high frequency magnetic component modelling. During the project, the performance and the design process of Switched Mode Power Supplies (SMPS) have been improved by means of an improvement of the design, modelling and manufacturing process of the power magnetic components.
The user company ENOSA, Spain, is designing power systems for flight control computers of aircrafts. In the past, the company ENOSA had the problem, that the influence of HF magnetic components was very dependent on the winding strategy used and that these effects could not be simulated. In addition, the use of planar layers to design transformers was not possible and conventional wired transformers had to be used instead.
The Magnetic Modelling Tool (MMT) developed as prototype by UPM-DIE, Spain, during the Powercad project has been introduced into the company ENOSA during the Demonstration Project to generate accurate frequency dependent behavioural models. This gave ENOSA the opportunity to guarantee adequate performance and to save time during the design and development process of the whole SMPS.
The main objectives of ENOSA and UPM-DIE within the Demonstration Project have been to set up suitable and very accurate behavioural models for SMPS magnetic components to allow the calculation of e.g. layer position, sensitivity of tracks or the dimensions of isolations, to improve the performance of the magnetic components based on the results of the simulation, to improve the design process of SMPS because the simulation allows to check the expected result before the physical building of the component, to reduce the design time due to less iteration steps, and to reduce the development costs.
Main lessons learnt during the project have been:
- Hilary Kahn, EARNEST, UM
One main goal of EARNEST has been to set up a basis to communicate best practice results to a wider audience within the EARNEST workshops. This goal has not been fully achieved. The main reasons for that seem to be, that the projects were grouped according to a similar completion date rather than according to subjects, related to the local industry or the expertise of the organiser of the workshop.
Although the idea of taking videos about the presentation to allow a wider spread of the results is very interesting and worthwhile, some of the speakers felt uncomfortable being recorded during the presentation.
As a conclusion, the workshops were an interesting experiment, which were more expensive to organise than expected. In addition, homogeneous workshops would be more likely to attract a larger audience, a company intending to participate would be interested not only in one project but in the whole focused series of presentations.
One main lesson learnt during the project is that to select suitable companies as target audience to establish best practice is one of the main difficulties. Beside a good address database, a lot of knowledge is needed about the local industries to link the Application Experiments and Dissemination projects to possible candidates for an exploitation of the project results.
- Peter Baur, EC
For most organisations, the completion of an Esprit project is only the first step towards commercialising their work. The hurdles that they then face can be formidable: finance, legislation, marketing and distribution; all need to be addressed. Experience shows that social contacts or networking is a key factor to overcome these barriers.
Esprit’s PROSOMA service is linked to and expands the CORDIS dissemination service. PROSOMA has been launched to help industry benefit from the many successes achieved in the programme. PROSOMA helps companies looking for new innovative IT solutions to identify relevant Esprit R&D results by making available professionally produced presentations of the results via CD-ROM, WWW, books, newspapers, journals and TV.
- Juergen Kreyssig, IAM FuE, Germany
The main instruments for achieving the goal of FUSE are the Application Experiments. In these experiments, the enterprise carries out the design, manufacturing and test of a component which is relevant to the improvement of their manufactured products. A vital principle in FUSE is that the participating enterprise acquires the necessary know-how and experience to access and use microelectronics technologies themselves after the Application Experiment.
The Technology Transfer Nodes are the secondary instrument. These nodes are established in all regions throughout Europe to provide a local interface to participating enterprises. They proactively seek enterprises in all industrial sectors and at all levels of the ‘technology ladder’ and offer technical and economic expertise to assist them in their selection and application of the new technologies.
In addition to the benefits gained by the enterprise, FUSE aims to capture and disseminate the essentials of the Application Experiments to encourage other enterprises to adopt microelectronics technologies as a means of improving competitiveness. It is another task of the TTNs to extract the essentials of the Application Experiments they monitor and to use these in order to create awareness of the benefits of microelectronics technologies by very focused actions like direct visits or targeted workshops.
It was interesting to note, that for the participating enterprises, it was not always easy, in the past, to convince their managers of writing a proposal for the ESD best practice action. Small companies, in particular, seem to think that there is little chance for them to successfully participate in a programme. Programmes like ESD and FUSE proved the opposite and enabled a lot of companies to join a European technology programme for the first time.
The participating enterprises did not express any fear that the dissemination of their experiences might raise a confidentiality problem, because special know-how of the company might be used by a competitor. These companies saw the ESD workshops more as a forum to present their company and their expertise to new potential customers or suitable partners for other activities. The companies’ expectations were not always matched by the number of industrial participants.
It was expressed by the participants of the forum, that a workshop must be very targeted, if a lot of participants are to be expected. This is especially true, when companies are expected from both the very local industries and also from farther away in Europe. In addition, the promotion of a workshop must start very early and must be done in different steps from pure short mailings to very targeted telephone activities.
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This document is located at /esprit/src/tcsesddf.htm It was last updated on 28 April 1998, and is maintained by Colette.Maloney@dg3.cec.be