STMicroelectronics
will create 650 jobs and invest $1.25bn in the
Crolles R&D and wafer fab
facility by 2012, according to ST's CEO, Carlo Bozotti, who added
that the investment would give ST 'strategic independence'.
Bozotti was speaking at a ceremony to mark the formal launch of
Nano2012 a joint R&D
programme with CEA-LETI, the French Laboratory for Electronics
& Information The French Minister of Economy, Industry and
Employment, Christine Lagarde, said the investment was:
"Strategically important since we will be keep a French production
site in a sector which is absolutely crucial for us."
Nano2012 is a public/private strategic R&D program, led by
ST, which gathers research institutes and industrial partners and
is supported by French national, regional and local
authorities.
The Nano2012 cooperation programme, with other programmes such
as CATRENE, aims to provide will Europe's electronics industry with
competitive access to the most advanced CMOS technologies from 32nm
down to 22nm.
Work on the Nano2012 programme started on January 1, 2008. The
five-year program, which will run until December 31, 2012, is
partly funded to the extent of Euros 457m by the French public
authorities.
See also: Mannerisms -
The EU's Microelectronics Dilemma
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Other partners are INRIA (the French National Institute for
Research in Computer Science and Control), CNRS (National centre
for Scientific Research), universities, and many small- and
medium-sized enterprise partners.
ST and CEA-LETI initially set up of the Crolles R&D centre
in 1992, with CEA-LETI providing the interface between long-term
academic research and ST's market-driven industrial R&D.
In July 2007, ST joined the semiconductor Joint Development
Alliance centred at IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development
centre in East Fishkill and Albany, New York, which develops core
and low-power CMOS processes from 32 to 22nm, and IBM joined ST in
Crolles to develop value-added application-specific derivative CMOS
technologies.
CEA-LETI and IBM, which have complementary expertise in the
development of materials and processes required for CMOS
technology, are collaborating on advanced process R&D down to
22nm and beyond, at CEA-LETI's Grenoble site (France), IBM's East
Fishkill facility (NY), ST's Crolles site (France), and at the
Albany NanoTech research centre (NY).
Since the start of the Nano2012 program in January 2008, ST and
IBM have exchanged researchers between their sites at Crolles and
East Fishkill and have begun working along with researchers from
CEA-LETI on a variety of key programs, including 32nm and 28nm core
CMOS processes, 45nm RF (Radio Frequency) derivative technology for
wireless applications and 65nm non-volatile-memory derivative
technology for use in automotive and smart-card applications.
Nano2012 focuses on technology platform development for
low-power and application-specific derivative CMOS technologies. A
technology platform encompasses the manufacturing process by which
billions of transistors are integrated onto a single silicon chip
as well as the components libraries and the design methodology to
efficiently design leading-edge circuits in this process.