GUARANTEEING EUROPEAN LEADERSHIP

However, Europe must maintain and improve its position in the global electronics market, demanding major investment in research, design and production. Nanoelectronics requires a multidisciplinary approach, advanced research and manufacturing facilities, and well planned co-ordination of industry-oriented research and public support at regional, national and Community level.

Public-private partnerships at European level are particularly important to avoid duplication and dispersion of efforts, and ensure a critical mass of coherent investments. Large-scale, long-term funding for strategic priorities will permit more unified collaborative R&D to develop the new products and processes essential to Europe’s competitive position, employment and our future quality of life.

Major factors in ensuring competitive products are size and cost reduction. This requires development of complete system-on-chip (SoC) devices, which integrate more functions on the same silicon chip, so reducing costs, physical size and energy consumption, and increasing functionality.

Such a process requires use of nanoelectronics and means that, increasingly, it is the chipmaker that will be defining applications rather than electronic systems houses. So it is equally crucial that European chipmakers build high performance products for a competitive cost to guarantee global competitiveness. Therefore, development of cost-efficient manufacturing processes is as important as technological breakthroughs.

As recent advances in nanoscale technologies lead to mass markets by the end of the decade, other industries will also be able to benefit from the high technology experience and low cost mass manufacturing expertise developed for nanoelectronics systems. The result will be increased demand for highly qualified workers, improved quality of life through safer and better performing products incorporating electronic chips and intelligent nanosystems, and a more efficient use of materials leading to a better environment for all.