Record budget for IMEC

During its General Assembly last week IMEC revealed that its self-generated revenues rose by more than 12% during 2004, reaching some Eur 125 million.

During its General Assembly last week IMEC revealed that its self-generated revenues rose by more than 12% during 2004, reaching some Eur 125 million.

Taking into account the grant from the Government of Flanders, the total budget is now Eur 159 million, the highest in 20 years of IMEC history.

The inauguration of a new research infrastructure in 2004 was a clear sign that IMEC will remain at the forefront during the era of nanoelectronics.

IMEC's Eur 125 million self-generated revenues represent 78.3% of the total budget of Euro 159 million.

The remaining 21.7% or Eur 34 million is an annual grant from the Government of Flanders.

Since its foundation, IMEC has sustained an annual increase in revenues.

The revenues from contract research have been generated through collaboration with local industry (24.14%) as well as with international industry (62.23%), through projects of the European Commission (11.53%), the European Space Agency ESA (3.08%) and the local government (0.01%).

In recent years, IMEC launched several large research programmes, determining the financial success of 2004.

An example is the setting up of a centralised research platform around the new 300mm clean room, dealing with the major challenges for the next generation of IC technologies.

Seven core partners - Infineon, Intel, Matsushita, Philips, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments - teamed up with IMEC to join research on process steps, models and devices for the sub-45nm technology node.

Next to this, strategic partnerships were signed with 10 leading equipment suppliers and for immersion lithography the world's largest consortium of more than 30 major players was united.

And as a final example, IMEC's multimode multimedia (M4) programme in which technology platforms are developed for the mobile terminal of the future, welcomed Samsung Electronics as its first core partner, next to others partners (like FreeScale, Infineon and Xilinx), working together with IMEC's team on part of the M4 programme.

In its home region of Flanders, IMEC collaborated with 123 Flemish companies, 69 of which were small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

They called on IMEC to join research projects, training, feasibility studies, process and product innovation, technology transfer or prospecting services.

Also, a new spinoff company Gemidis was set up in collaboration with the Ghent University, providing solutions for the integration of liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplays in day-to-day applications.

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