ProRISC (Program for Research on Integrated Systems and Circuits) is the Micro-Electronic design division of the Technology Foundation and has an anual workshop at the ICT.OPEN2011.
The Beginning
In 1988 there was a growing demand from the research community for a platform for micro-electronic design activities. At a meeting in 1989 at the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, ProRISC was 'born'. It got the legal status of an autonomous division of the Technology Foundation, with its own board and a budget for organizing conferences.
Originally, ProRISC was intended only for the chip-designers, the first two conferences were on design-methodology. Design methodology however is no independent science, a micro-electronic design uses certain devices (e.g. transistors), incorporates the technology used to process the final chip and a chip is (mostly) part of a bigger system. It was therefore only natural, that the designer-community was joined by the device- and system designers in the second year. One year later also the signal-processors (the people, not the chips ;-)) joined, and ProRISC covered the entire area for micro-electronic system design.
Goal
As already stated, ProRISC is the micro-electronic design division of STW, it serves as a platform for all the researchers in the field of microelectronics and the users of the results of the research projects. ProRISC has no budget for research, proposals for new projects will still have to compete with all the other proposals at STW. However, ProRISC tries to bring together researchers and users by means of organizing an annual workshop. Furthermore, ProRISC tries to acquire extra financial means for research.
Relation to other areas
Since 1998 ProRISC workshop has been combined with the SAFE (Semiconductor Advances for Future Electronics) workshop. SAFE focuses on recent developments in semiconductor research, materials, fabrication technology and device technology and is a two day workshop. This year the workshops will be held completely parallel but not partly like the last few years. The SeSens Workshop on Semiconductor Sensor and Actuator Technology has stopped as a separate workshop. From now on its activities are incorporated in SAFE and ProRISC.
For further information call +31 (0) 30 600 12 97 or e-mail to prorisc@stw.nl.
