The Sophia Antipolis region has a project to assist small and medium sized companies (SMEs) with access to design tools and research. The CIM PACA project is hosted in a local university with multiple servers to run leading edge EDA software from Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, as well as a Veloce emulator system from Mentor Graphics. Companies can buy time on the system as they need it.

CIM PACA also hosts collaborative research projects in several areas, with a focus on wireless systems. One project is automating the analysis of antennas, providing accurate measurements on near field strength that can be extrapolated to the far field.

Another project is looking at MEMS micromachined RF switching that can operate at up to 60GHz for switching between antenna arrays

The equipment is also available to companies in the area, and one has been looking at system in package (SiP) technologies. Insight SiP is developing RF modules that combine RF, analogue and digital chips in a single package and has been using the CIM PACA capabilities, and this is an area for more research.

“We have been using this equipment which has been very good for our business,” said Marc Vodovar, CEO. “The alternative was to rent the equipment and there is no way we could have grown our business without this.”