IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2014 - 44

design tools contain the same interfaces as supplied by the design tool
vendors to industry so academic
intuitions are free to use design
tools supplied by EUROPRACTICE
in the same flow with design tools
supplied from other sources, even
tools developed within a university.

Industrial Impact
Microelectronics is an important
industry for the European economy,
and keeping that industry healthy in
an increasingly competitive global
marketplace is a significant challenge. European academic institutes are a vital part of the supply

This has driven EUROPRACTICE and
its academic institute members to
diversify into areas such as silicon
photonics and microfluidics. By
making tools and processes in these
areas available as early as possible,
EUROPRACTICE helps European academic institutes to be in the best
position to establish industries
around these new technologies.

The Future
The EUROPRACTICE service has
always striven to remain as close as is
practical to the leading edge of industry standard design flows, tools and
processes. For this reason we are able

Microelectronics is an important industry for the
European economy, and keeping that industry
healthy in an increasingly competitive global
marketplace is a significant challenge.
chain for European industry, both
through the opportunities created
by research and the supply of highly
skilled graduates. The availability of
up-to-date industry relevant design
tools and technologies ensures that
the graduates produced are highly
skilled and more immediately useful to industry. This common infrastructure also makes collaborative
projects between academic institutes
and between academic institutes and
industry possible.
To further facilitate cooperation
with industry, all MPW services are
open to industry for prototype and
small volume production. EUROPRACTICE-supplied design tools are
provided under a strict noncommercial use policy, but by special
arrangement, an academic institute
can apply for an extended license
that, subject to approval, allows a
collaborative project to be undertaken with an industrial partner.
For European industry to prosper
in the future, it will need to continue
to exploit emerging technologies as
early and efficiently as possible.

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to look into the near future with reasonable confidence. Academic institutions already have fully enabled
design tools and design flows compatible with the smallest geometry processes. MPW fabrication services are
currently offered at the 40-nm node,
with 28-nm and smaller technologies
planned. In accordance with EUROPRACTICE principles, this technology
will be available as a mini@sic process
to allow affordable access to these
advanced processes by academic
institutions. Similarly, another area
of further development is 2.5-dimensional and three-dimensional integration, with the design tools recently
introduced and routes to prototype
manufacture being planned.
Photonics has emerged as an
exciting area for designers in recent
years. Although still in its early
stages as a design discipline, the
EUROPRACTICE portfolio already
has tools to perform optical analysis and layout of photonics structures as custom structures or as
standard structures from a library
of optical components. These tools

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

will complement the MPW service
via ePIXfab, an EC project to provide
photonics MPW services.

Conclusion
European academic institutes have
affordable, one-stop access to the
best design tools, design flows, and
processes normally only available
to the largest multinational corporations. European fabless design companies have easy access to prototype
and small volume fabrication, packaging, and test. This common European microelectronics-based design
infrastructure facilitates cooperation. Graduates entering industry
from European academic institutes
are more appropriately trained and
more able to meet future challenges
of industry.
As the requirements of European
academic institutes have evolved,
so have the offerings of the service.
The EUROPRACTICE user community of today is far broader both
geographically and thematically
than could have been envisaged at
the beginning of EUROCHIP.

Acknowledgments
The collaboration of all EUROCHIP
and EUROPRACTICE project partners with the authors of this paper
is gratefully acknowledged.
The EC is acknowledged for its
continuous support under several
Framework Programs FP2, FP3, FP4,
FP5, FP6, and FP7.

About the Authors
Carl Das is with EUROPRACTICE
Service, imec, Leuven, Belgium. He
is director and responsible for the
EUROPRACTICE MPW service and
the ASIC services including volume test and packaging for fabless
companies.
John McLean is with Europractice
Service, STFC Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory, Didcot, United Kingdom. He is head and responsible for
the EUROPRACTICE Design Tool and
Programmable Platform services for
European academic institutions.

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