Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Microsystems and Solid State Technologies EMFTThe Bavarian Chip Design Center (BCDC) has the vision of “More innovation through chip design” and thus strengthening Bavaria’s competitiveness. Start-ups, SMEs, and other innovative companies in particular who need customized chips for their products and applications will find support at the Chip Design Center. BCDC pursues the goals of providing companies with low-threshold access to chips in small series, securing the next generation of skilled workers for chip design through talent measures, and shortening chip development times and reducing development costs through a strong IC design ecosystem.
Bavarian Chip-Design-Center @Fraunhofer EMFT
Together with the other BCDC partners Fraunhofer AISEC and Fraunhofer IIS, Fraunhofer EMFT is actively involved in transfering technological knowledge to future chip design talents and supports various measures to simplify the chip supply chain. Fraunhofer EMFT contributes its entire portfolio of expertise in the field of circuits and systems to the BCDC IC design ecosystem.
Supply Chain
In the area of supply chain, the BCDC focuses on developing methods to reduce the overall costs of testing and inspecting ICs, developing design-for-test methodologies, automating low-volume testing, and developing design flows for technology porting. This is where Fraunhofer EMFT's expertise in analysis and testing comes into play, e.g., in the form of failure analysis at the component level and characterization of protective structures against electrostatic discharge (ESD).
Chiplet Systems
The Chiplet Systems division enables small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to easily access solutions with non-monolithic chiplet systems. Chiplet components are reused, reducing development time, costs, and risk for the customer. Fraunhofer EMFT develops IPs and chiplet components for various tasks and technologies such as voltage references, high-resolution multi-channel ADCs, RF systems, and power management for MEMS control systems.
Secure System-on-Chip
The main goal in this area is support the industry in developing secure solutions, especially when it comes to how hardware and software work together. Fraunhofer EMFT makes an important contribution to hardware security through test development for chips, chiplets, and systems, which includes parametric and functional verification, characterization, qualification, and productive testing of discrete semiconductor devices and integrated circuits at the wafer and component level.
Sensor and actuator systems and AI
The services offered in this area target Bavarian companies, especially start-ups and SMEs, that need solutions for sensor systems, sensor signal processing, or integrated AI. Fraunhofer EMFT's expertise covers the entire chain from the design, development, and manufacture of sensor and actuator components to chip design for analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and the integration of complete sensor systems, including AI support.