Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RETICLES (Research, Entrepreneurship, Training, IP-exchange & Chip pLatform of EUROPRACTICE Services)
Reporting period: 2023-10-01 to 2024-09-30
RETICLES has set an overarching goal to strengthen the design capacity in Europe and to further lower the barriers to get access to advanced semiconductor technologies. RETICLES will achieve this by providing Europe with an open-access platform to design and fabricate electronic components and systems. The affordable and easier access to a wide range of state-of-the-art industry-grade fabrication technologies and design tools will be complemented with training, stimulation and support to users from European industry and academia. As a result, routes to prototype and commercialisation will be provided and the supply of people with the right digital skills will be secured.
To achieve its overall goal, RETICLES will undertake activities driven by five objectives:
1: Establish open access services enabling affordable prototyping in advanced nanoelectronic technologies and fully packaged systems supporting the growth of new digital industries.
2: Strengthen and boost the European design ecosystem involving both Academia and SMEs.
3: Establish advanced training programmes, primarily focusing on electronic components design and system integration technologies, ensuring European industries have access to a skilled workforce.
4: Support research and innovation at the European universities and research centres and stimulate exploitation activities (in particular spin-offs and subsequent commercialisation).
5: Incubate emerging (low TRL) semiconductor technologies from leading European research centres and Digital Innovation Initiatives.
To achieve its overall goal, RETICLES will undertake activities driven by five objectives:
1: Establish open access services enabling affordable prototyping in advanced nanoelectronic technologies and fully packaged systems supporting the growth of new digital industries.
2: Strengthen and boost the European design ecosystem involving both Academia and SMEs.
3: Establish advanced training programmes, primarily focusing on electronic components design and system integration technologies, ensuring European industries have access to a skilled workforce.
4: Support research and innovation at the European universities and research centres and stimulate exploitation activities (in particular spin-offs and subsequent commercialisation).
5: Incubate emerging (low TRL) semiconductor technologies from leading European research centres and Digital Innovation Initiatives.
RETICLES builds upon and extends the existing Europractice open access services by adding new technologies and services to the portfolio, attracting new users, and maintaining the satisfaction of existing ones.
In Year 2 of the RETICLES project (from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024), 852 MPW designs were submitted for fabrication, an increase of 17% from the first year. As in previous years, the majority of designs (77%) were submitted by European customers, with 23.5% coming from SMEs.
In the second year of the project, two new European suppliers, SINTEF and Graphenea, were added to the technology portfolio. We also continued broadening our services related to systems and chiplets integration, and advanced packaging. For instance, the Micro-Transfer Printing (MTP) offer enabling chiplets integration has been prepared. Moreover, Cadence Integrity 3DIC platform, which provides a full flow for true 3D IC stacking and chiplet integration, has been added to the offer.
RETICLES also focuses on facilitating design IP exchange between academia (and later, SMEs), supporting Open-Hardware solutions, and stimulating the adoption of advanced technology nodes (such as FinFET and FD-SOI).
After establishing the design IP exchange ecosystem of CERN, which currently has 110 IPs utilised by 116 users, the consortium focused on setting up a design IP exchange repository for the broader academic community in Europe. In Year 2, we made significant progress by launching the web platform, which is currently in a sandbox phase.
To endorse Open-Hardware solutions, Europractice began supporting IHP’s open-source Process Design Kit (PDK) based on the 130nm BiCMOS technology SG13G2 and CORNERSTONE’s PDK for the Ge-on-Si technology, bringing the total number of open-access PDKs supported by Europractice to 8.
Since the project start, 49 Europractice users were motivated to design in a smaller node: 71 users prototyped in advanced technologies with nodes equal to or below 28nm for the first time, with GlobalFoundries 22nm FD-SOI being the most popular advanced technology. The FinFET nodes under the TSMC University FinFET Program, introduced in Europractice in 2023, are now getting traction with 65 application forms received.
RETICLES continued to deliver a rich portfolio of training on carefully selected topics that were relevant to the current and emerging needs of the European sector. In the second year, 29 Training Courses, 2 Training Workshops, and 12 webinars were delivered. 1703 delegates attended a Training Course, Training Worksop or Webinar during the period, including delegates from 322 Europractice Member Institutes of 34 EMEA Countries.
To support European entrepreneurs, we are currently engaged with four spin-offs from universities and research labs using Europractice design tool licenses as part of our Proof of Concept programme. Two of these spin-offs have commercialised their designs, and one additional design developed in academia has also been commercialised. In total, since the start of the project, 14 academic spin-offs founded in the last five years were supported with design tools or MPW fabrication services.
The Europractice portfolio includes emerging semiconductor technologies from imec, CEA-Leti, Fraunhofer, IHP, and Tyndall. Since the start of the project, two new technologies from IHP have been added together with piezoelectric MEMS from SINTEF, a leading European independent research institute in Norway. For the sustained growth of the Europractice emerging technologies offering, it is important that imec is very closely connected to funded Digital Innovation Initiatives such as PREVAIL, photonixFAB, and the NanoIC pilot line.
In Year 2 of the RETICLES project (from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024), 852 MPW designs were submitted for fabrication, an increase of 17% from the first year. As in previous years, the majority of designs (77%) were submitted by European customers, with 23.5% coming from SMEs.
In the second year of the project, two new European suppliers, SINTEF and Graphenea, were added to the technology portfolio. We also continued broadening our services related to systems and chiplets integration, and advanced packaging. For instance, the Micro-Transfer Printing (MTP) offer enabling chiplets integration has been prepared. Moreover, Cadence Integrity 3DIC platform, which provides a full flow for true 3D IC stacking and chiplet integration, has been added to the offer.
RETICLES also focuses on facilitating design IP exchange between academia (and later, SMEs), supporting Open-Hardware solutions, and stimulating the adoption of advanced technology nodes (such as FinFET and FD-SOI).
After establishing the design IP exchange ecosystem of CERN, which currently has 110 IPs utilised by 116 users, the consortium focused on setting up a design IP exchange repository for the broader academic community in Europe. In Year 2, we made significant progress by launching the web platform, which is currently in a sandbox phase.
To endorse Open-Hardware solutions, Europractice began supporting IHP’s open-source Process Design Kit (PDK) based on the 130nm BiCMOS technology SG13G2 and CORNERSTONE’s PDK for the Ge-on-Si technology, bringing the total number of open-access PDKs supported by Europractice to 8.
Since the project start, 49 Europractice users were motivated to design in a smaller node: 71 users prototyped in advanced technologies with nodes equal to or below 28nm for the first time, with GlobalFoundries 22nm FD-SOI being the most popular advanced technology. The FinFET nodes under the TSMC University FinFET Program, introduced in Europractice in 2023, are now getting traction with 65 application forms received.
RETICLES continued to deliver a rich portfolio of training on carefully selected topics that were relevant to the current and emerging needs of the European sector. In the second year, 29 Training Courses, 2 Training Workshops, and 12 webinars were delivered. 1703 delegates attended a Training Course, Training Worksop or Webinar during the period, including delegates from 322 Europractice Member Institutes of 34 EMEA Countries.
To support European entrepreneurs, we are currently engaged with four spin-offs from universities and research labs using Europractice design tool licenses as part of our Proof of Concept programme. Two of these spin-offs have commercialised their designs, and one additional design developed in academia has also been commercialised. In total, since the start of the project, 14 academic spin-offs founded in the last five years were supported with design tools or MPW fabrication services.
The Europractice portfolio includes emerging semiconductor technologies from imec, CEA-Leti, Fraunhofer, IHP, and Tyndall. Since the start of the project, two new technologies from IHP have been added together with piezoelectric MEMS from SINTEF, a leading European independent research institute in Norway. For the sustained growth of the Europractice emerging technologies offering, it is important that imec is very closely connected to funded Digital Innovation Initiatives such as PREVAIL, photonixFAB, and the NanoIC pilot line.
For many years, Europractice has played a crucial role in the innovation chain in Europe by lowering the entry barrier and providing easy and affordable access to design tools, prototyping, and training. RETICLES has inherited and further extended the existing Europractice services used by more than 600 academic customers and 300 SMEs. Thanks to the RETICLES project, we continue to deliver over 65,000 concurrent licenses of design tool flows to European universities and research centres and more than 600 prototype designs fabricated yearly for European academic and industrial customers. We will also train more than 1500 highly skilled engineers, strengthening the workforce. This will lead to new products and new jobs, thereby reinforcing and expanding the European industrial ecosystem.
It is imperative that beyond the lifetime of the RETICLES project, the integrated services of the Europractice platform continue to be offered within Europe so that academia can adopt the latest technology to generate the highly trained engineers demanded by European industry, undertake leading-edge industry-relevant research ultimately leading to innovation and the creation of new spin-out SMEs in Europe.
It is imperative that beyond the lifetime of the RETICLES project, the integrated services of the Europractice platform continue to be offered within Europe so that academia can adopt the latest technology to generate the highly trained engineers demanded by European industry, undertake leading-edge industry-relevant research ultimately leading to innovation and the creation of new spin-out SMEs in Europe.