Publicly funded projects & industry associations

Driven by the fast development of electric vehicle and autonomous driving, the needs for on-vehicle computation power, performance complexity, safety, reliability and smartness have been greatly increased. To maintain the Europe's leadership for future automotive industry, it is vital to develop automotive supercomputing ECUs consisting of most advanced IC components (based on chiplet technology), discrete chips, and heterogeneous system integration technologies, wherein digital twin chip on board, based on highly efficient compact models, will be implemented.

To cope with the paradigm shift of from cloud to edge, we will bring superior computing resources closer to the in-situ data of the vehicle, to achieve real-time / safety for deterministic and highly reliable automation and optimized process control, to have better data security / privacy through reducing the attack surface, to gain energy efficiency and reduction in the environmental footprint. This project consists of mainly three technology pillars: developing advanced connectivity by optical, electrical and thermal interfaces at the ECU; novel component packaging technology and advanced heterogeneous integration to realize the superior ECU system; digital twin chips enabling accurate/reliable compact models for performance and reliability prediction.

This project will be jointly defined and executed by a leading industry and R&D consortium from Germany and Netherlands, wherein Bosch will be the overall project coordinator.

The main aim of the European Ecosystem for Green Electronic (EECONE) project is to reduce e-waste on a European scale. EECONE's vision is to develop and embed the constraints linked to managing the end-of-life of electronic products from the very beginning – in the development or process design. EECONE is paving the way as a first step toward a zero-waste electronic industry. The "6R concept will fully guide EECONE" (Reduce, Reliability, Repair, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle).

The environmental impact arising from e-waste can thus be reduced by working in three principal areas:

• Increase service lifetime of electronic products by application of ecodesign guidelines for increasing their reliability and their repair rate, thereby reducing the volume of e-waste. Reduction and replacement of materials to decrease the impact of e-waste.
• Reduction and replacement of materials in electronic components and systems to decrease the impact of e-waste.
• Improved circularity by reusing, recycling, and waste valorising materials/elements from electronic products.

The projects SAM3 and FA4.0 showed the success of a framework for collaborative development in failure analysis. It also already showed how thorough failure analysis contributes to quality and success of semiconductor industry especially in fields like autonomous driving and energy production with extraordinary quality requirements. The still running project FA4.0 already shows us the value of applying AI-algorithms and what new applications can be targeted with these methods, improving efficiency as well as productivity in our analysis process. The project also shows that typical failure analysis data landscapes lack the ability to easily apply these new methods.

Thus, an important target for project FA2IR is to get FA-databases AI-ready and to further develop the AI-based methods developed in FA4.0 for image and measurement data analysis. This shall also include the FAIR-data principle (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Therefore, we will employ a universally accepted data format that enables companies and suppliers to effortlessly exchange data with one another while ensuring effective protection of intellectual property and confidential data.

Additionally, with improved database landscapes, also new methods for AI-based database search shall be enabled. A FA-ontology enables a standardization of contents and is the basis for linking all relevant data within an analysis. This shall allow clearer and faster prediction of analysis results and next steps within analysis cases and therefore help to improve quality and turn-around-time of analysis jobs. Linking these AI-ready Databases to other databases within the value chain of semiconductor development and production process will enable utilization of the knowledge stored within FA-databases also in these fields. Prediction of failures already in the design phase or understanding failure modes in the qualification phase of new products based on comparable older products will thus be supported by AI. The current existing commercial database systems of project partners shall also be extended in the described way to have FA-AI-ready databases available on the market.

The consortium will include partners from Germany, France, Sweden, and Austria but we will promote extended intra-European exploitation. The consortium will also further develop the standardization topics started in FA4.0.

Therefore, the extended network of SEMI member companies will set up standards to allow the whole semiconductor market to follow the principles defined within FA2IR-project. Presentation of all project results and SEMI task force results will be regularly presented at FA conferences IPFA, ISTFA and CAM-WS.

The aim of CeCaS is to enable connected vehicles with a high level of automation. To this end, the software functions in the vehicle are controlled centrally in order to master the growing complexity. With platform-orientated development and hardware/software code design, a flexible solution can be created from the basic function to the user. In addition, the architecture will move from a domain-based hierarchy to a zonal and redundant high-availability architecture. This will be achieved through the use of "convolutional neural networks".

New, heterogeneous computer structures are being researched that offer high performance with low energy consumption. These are made robust against faults through adapted construction and connection technology, as well as suitable cooling methods.

Mannheim-FlexKI aims to break the hardware dependency of current development processes for AI applications and to define an open reference approach for the deployment (software distribution) of AI applications. To this end, two development paths are being pursued: the flexible deployment of AI applications on high-performance, commercial AI platforms and a coordinated approach for application-optimised processor and software development for a new, customised and energy-efficient AI platform.

Both paths enable the rapid migration of AI applications to other AI platforms if certain hardware components are not available due to protectionism or supply bottlenecks. This allows previously tight manufacturer dependencies to be broken.

The PowerizeD project is focusing on improving the way energy is generated and transmitted through the use of digitised and intelligent electronic power - strongly contributing to the decarbonization of European society and the protection of our climate.

As of today, all electronics systems are developed following design for reliability that requires time consuming reliability test. In PowerizeD we want to challenge the status quo and propose a new release process based on credible virtual pre-qualification. This might be possible only through collaboration along the entire supply chain, with the support from research institutes who can develop a new test strategy of bring beyond state-of-the-art simulation techniques, such as compact digital twin to the industry application.

In PowerizeD, Use case 5 we will develop an inverter for fuel cell application in electric drives to pave the way toward efficient mobility with zero local emissions. We propose smart digital solutions to shorten development time and tools for new data-driven business models:

• Simulation Driven Co-design – a simulation tool chain from silicon to the system level, incl. damage estimation at the design element level.
• Digital twin – compact modelling will allow for new data driven business models / prognostics and health management / predictive maintenance.
• Virtual release through referencing – is a unique method to reduce the development time and secure leadership position of the European Automotive Industry through the methodology which allows to be first on the market. This goal can be achieved through credible simulations that will be main contributors and enable virtual based release of power modules and power electronics.
• Prognostics and health management (PHM) as an enabler for predictive maintenance of power electronics.

Scale4Edge is a joint project funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research), which aims to significantly reduce the currently relatively long development times and high development costs of application-specific edge components (platform concept).

The approach pursued in the project is based on providing a commercial ecosystem for a scalable and flexibly expandable edge computing platform after the end of the project. The ecosystem will be created by a large number of SMEs in cooperation with industry and research institutes. Each SME contributes its expertise and markets the result as part of its own product portfolio after the end of the project.

The project "Trustworthy Electronics: Tech-for-Trust" T4T aims to provide the domestic industry with tools for access to secure supply chains and trustworthy electronics.

The main objective of the project is to enable a secure supply chain through distributed manufacturing (split manufacturing). In contrast to existing concepts, a new approach is being developed in which the distributed production of silicon components is combined in the assembly and connection technology. This is to take place both on a wafer-to-wafer basis and in the form of chiplets. The corresponding manufacturing technologies and a comprehensive design process are being developed for this purpose. Furthermore, the possibility of inserting a quantum-safe cryptographic key into a wafer composite during wafer production will be created, thereby achieving a high level of counterfeit protection.

The use of ultra-modern processes in assembly and connection technology is intended to create the basis for a platform for the secure distributed production of wafer-based components, with the final consolidation of functions taking place in Germany. This will give German industry control over the protection of products against manipulation and IP theft, even in times of globally distributed production.

TRANSFORM develops a complete and competitive power electroncis value chain based on SiC semiconductors extending from wafers to inverters/converters, to be showcased in 5 applications. Model based system engineering and life­time models based on digital twins will be developed to enable understanding of complex interactions, shorten development cycles and improve traceability along the value chain.

Europe is well positioned in the power electronics (PE) domain with global players such as STMicroelectronics, Bosch and Infineon as well as innovation leaders like Soitec, Danfoss and Semikron. However R&D on SiC based PE is necessary for European sovereignty in the field of power electronics. This is an essential technology for many important societal challenges (health, digitalization, climate, energy, mobility, agriculture…) in Europe.

TRANSFORM consortium brings together key European players among the complete SiC value chain: from materials and substrates to inverters and converters for 5 uses cases in automotive, industry, renewables and agriculture applications. Our consortium of 33 partners from 7 EU countries including universities and technology institutes as well as OEMs on the advisory board offers the essential competencies and platform for targeted achievements.

The KDT-JU-funded TRISTAN project aims to expand and develop RISC-V architecture in Europe to compete with existing commercial alternatives. This open specification eliminates the need to learn and create unique ecosystems for each processor architecture, increasing productivity, security and transparency. TRISTAN’s approach will be holistic, covering electronic design automation tools and the full software stack.

TRISTAN’S overarching aim is to expand, mature and industrialize the European RISC-V ecosystem to compete with existing commercial alternatives. Building blocks developed in TRISTAN will be demonstrated in the business domains of Automotive, Industrial, Aerospace, Mobile, Wearables and Health.