Infrastructures for Education and Research: from National Initiatives to Worldwide Development

摘要

Infrastructures to provide access to custom integrated hardware manufacturing facilities are important because they allow students and researchers to access professional facilities at a reasonable cost and they allow companies to access small volume production, otherwise difficult to obtain directly from manufacturers. In the late 70s and early 80s, pioneering integrated circuits multi-chip projects and multi-project wafers initiatives have been launched in Europe, Asia, and North America. Some of these initiatives work together and today a worldwide cooperation has been established by the most experienced. The paper will review these initiatives and the motivations for a global cooperation scheme.