21 September 2005
DUBAI -- Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO), the Dubai-based technology park for microelectronics and the semiconductor industry, yesterday announced an agreement with Circuits-Multi-Projects (CMP), a French company that serves universities, research laboratories and small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) for the manufacturing and packaging of integrated circuits.
Dr Mohammed Al Zarouni, vice-chairman, DSO said: "This is the first French company in the technology industry to partner with DSO, we greatly appreciate this partnership and look forward to associations with a variety of European, American and Asian companies to obtain the best technology worldwide. The agreement with CMP is a great step that will benefit both sides and help us in achieving our objective of transferring technology to the region. The agreement is the first technology transfer in the region and greatly enhances the educational and training initiatives of DSO. CMP will serve as a one-stop-shop for universities and academic institutions as well as design centres in the region covering the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and all countries in Africa.
"With the deployment of Synopsys industry standard EDA tools to the local as well as to regional universities, the DSO agreement with CMP facilitates the fabrication and packaging of chip designs that are research or students projects based," said Dr Eesa Bastaki, director, technology & development at DSO.
Foundries and silicon vendors are becoming more and more reluctant to take small quantity orders from companies. They typically want to work with one source that offers customer project coordination to eliminate needed overhead. CMP has provided that single source to 450 institutions and 150 SMEs from 60 countries, prototyped 4500 projects and interfaced with more than 50 different process technologies.
BY A STAFF REPORTER
© Khaleej Times 2005
