Easy foundry access for smaller projects

A new foundry agreement has been signed between UMC and IMEC's Europractice IC Service.

A new foundry agreement has been signed between UMC and IMEC's Europractice IC Service.

This agreement, which follows several years of close collaboration between UMC and Europractice, offers access to UMC's Silicon Shuttle multiproject wafer (MPW) platform for prototyping and production services.

This will be of particular interest to European-based organisations with low-volume manufacturing needs, such as universities, research centres, startup companies and companies with small niche markets.

The Europractice IC Service, co-ordinated by IMEC, offers companies ASIC services to help them bring their products to market quickly and cost-effectively.

Under the foundry agreement, Europractice's customers will have easy access to UMC's most advanced technologies for low-volume production, including 0.13-micron CMOS logic and mixed-mode/RF, and low-cost prototyping.

"Over the past years, Europractice has built up a tremendous expertise in place and route services, library, IP and back-end support.

What's more, Europractice has become thoroughly familiar with UMC's most advanced technology processes and design rules.

Its proven track record within UMC's technologies is impressive.

Therefore, we strongly believe that Europractice, is ideally positioned to help European startups and small customers get first pass silicon", explained Felix Hu, General Manager of UMC Europe.

"By minimising the risk of error in the initial design and tape-out stages, and by offering guidance on how to reach stable production volumes, Europractice provides great benefits to startups and small companies in general".

Carl Das, Director of the Europractice IC Service, said, "We are extremely proud to be recognised as an official partner of UMC.

The foundry agreement with UMC is the reward of a very fruitful cooperation begun over two years ago.

In the past, smaller companies sometimes had difficulty getting continued access to foundries.

But our successful collaboration with UMC, culminating in today's foundry agreement, shows that UMC provides a consistent solution for these smaller companies and is fully committed to help startups and fabless companies reach maturity".

The three-year agreement also leaves open the possibility for Europractice and UMC to extend their co-operation towards other advanced technologies in the future.

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