Infineon has announced the launch of two Euopean Union-wide three-year research projects dedicated to gallium nitride (GaN) integration and AI application.
The first project, known as ALL2GaN (Affordable smart GaN IC solutions for greener applications, is led by Infineon Austria. Bringing together 45 partners from twelve countries, with a total budget around EUR60 million, the project aims to integrate GaN into various applications to reduce emission, and its research team is working on a crucial milestone to make GaN power semiconductors modular to facilitate easy integration.
According to Infineon, the research extends from individual chip elements, high-performance GaN modules, to chip designs and novel system-on-chip approaches, and the new GaN chip generation is projected to reduce energy losses in applications by an average of 30% - equivalent to 218 megatons of CO2 saved worldwide.
Parners in the project include Imec, Nexperia, Ballard Power Systems, EPFL, and Ericsson. Ultimately, Infineon expects European players active in telecommunications, datacenters and server farms to benefit from the project, in addition to those in the e-mobility and renewable energy sectors.
Another project, AIMS5.0 (Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing leading to Sustainability and Industry 5.0), is being conducted on smart AI technologies for resource-efficient manufacturing in Europe, pooling together 53 partners from twelve countries. The project, led by Infinion Munich, is worth EUR70 million.
The AIMS5.0 research team is taking a common AI approach across industries and applications for the first time. According to Infineon, the project is about the development and production of hardware and software components and a secure AI networking platform. The results are expected to strengthen manufacturing in mechanical engineering, semiconductors, electronics as well as in the automotive industry and create resilient supply chains in Europe.
"With this project, we are providing the technologies of tomorrow. With AI research, we are supporting a modern and sustainable industry. This benefits the partners directly and subsequently many other manufacturing sectors. It strengthens the entire industry and know-how location as well as the technological sovereignty in Europe," explains Thomas Morgenstern, Executive Director Frontend Infineon Technologies AG and adds: "At the same time, the project also develops the AI skills of employees through training and qualification methods and improves human-machine interaction.
Partners in the project include BMW, NXP and Fraunhofer Institute.
The official start of both European projects will take place on May 23, 2023 at Infineon's Villach site. Both EU projects are co-funded by the KDT-JU (Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking) program of the European Union and the participating countries.
