Mutual support helps companies prosper in the south of France
01 November 2011
When attending exhibitions, the sheer number of organised meetings means that I don’t have time to attend as many conference sessions as I’d like.
It often feels like I’ve missed an important and integral part of the event where genuinely new technology is announced or proposed. Happily, this was not the case when I attended the SAME conference recently. The event focussed mainly on conference sessions and the exhibition was compact enough to get round during session breaks.
SAME is the Sophia Antipolis Microelectronics Exhibition. Sophia Antipolis is a technology cluster near Nice, which focuses on research for the communications, computing, electronics and biomedical industries. Companies with operations in Sophia Antipolis read like a ‘who’s who’ of electronics; ST, Infineon, ARM, TI, Cadence etc and many more are based in or near the town.
The conference sessions were wide and varied; ranging from a panel discussion on next generation communications featuring Nokia, Orange and TI, to research news from universities as well as a start up sessions giving four of the area’s most interesting new companies time to present an overview of their businesses.
Undoubtedly, the highlights for me were the two presentations from Berkeley University. In the first presentation, the team was investigating low power design and built a microprocessor made completely from relays on 0.65m silicon as proof of concept. The second paper detailed the progress the team had made integrating a DC/DC converter directly on a processor chip. The design allowed the power to be distributed around the chip with minimal losses, and the university claimed that the results were comparable with today’s discrete solutions. I’m hopeful to have an article soon with more information on the on-chip DC/DC converter, as well as other stories from the conference.
The conference itself was a really great experience, but almost as interesting was the support for companies in the area from SAME and the universities. I don’t think I’ve seen anything similar in the UK to support any of our own technology clusters.
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