The COPPER project will provide a novel copper deposition process to overcome the limitations of currently employed interconnect formation processes enabling device scaling beyond the 32 nm technology node. COPPER will achieve the final goal through collaborations within a very strong consortium based on a team with outstanding scientific, engineering and manufacturing qualifications. In a first phase, electrolyte ingredients will be selected and experimentally verified, a deposition cell designed through modelling and simulation as well as new analytical techniques evaluated to enable adequate analysis of the deposited films. The second phase will focus on the development of the copper deposition process based on the findings from phase one with the additional support of micro-modelling and the process scaled and integrated into a 300mm proof-of-concept. In the third and final phase, the process will be integrated into a complete interconnect scheme, and optimized according to the industrial chip manufacturer’s needs. For more information please see www.copper-project.eu.

Technikon is the official coordinator of this 5.1 (five point one) million Euro R&D project.

In order to strengthen Europe’s leading position in high-speed, end-to-end, mobile network systems technology, the Multi-Base consortium has identified three main areas where research will have a major impact on the advancement of state-of-the-art technology and the emergence of a sound competitive and innovative environment for the European communications and services industry: multi-tasking radio, scalable reconfigurable multi processor technology (MPSOC frameworks) and algorithm/architecture co-design for maximum energy efficiency. The Multi-Base project objectives target the elimination of key technical and commercial barriers to ubiquitous broadband access by enabling efficient and sustainable disposition of operation and production factors as spectrum, power engineering cost and silicon process technology. Drawing on project research in these three areas, the Multi-Base consortium will demonstrate new handset baseband architectures that enable end-to-end interconnection of humans and devices, with ability to support tenfold scaling in the number of interoperating connectivity links at the same cost and power consumption as today’s technology. For more information please see www.multibase-project.eu.

Technikon is the official coordinator of this 5.3 (five point three) million Euro R&D project.

Development of hardware devices and software products is facilitated by a design flow, and a set of tools (e.g., compilers and debuggers), which automate tasks normally performed by experienced, highly skilled developers. However, in both hardware and software examples the tools are generic since they seldom provide specific support for a particular domain. The goal of this project is to design, develop and deploy a toolbox that will support the specific domain of cryptographic software engineering. Ordinarily, development of cryptographic software is a huge challenge: security and trust is mission critical and modern applications processing sensitive data typically require the deployment of sophisticated cryptographic techniques. The proposed toolbox will allow non-experts to develop high-level cryptographic applications and business models by means of cryptography-aware high-level programming languages and compilers. The description of such applications in this way will allow automatic analysis and transformation of cryptographic software to detect security critical implementation failures, e.g., software and hardware based side-channel attacks, when realizing low level cryptographic primitives and protocols. Ultimately, the end result will be better quality, more robust software at much lower cost; this provides both a clear economic benefit to the European industry in the short term, and positions it better in dealing with any future roadblocks to ICT development in the longer term. For more information please see www.cace-project.eu.

Technikon is the official coordinator of this 4.8 (four point eight) million Euro R&D project.

Trusted Computing has become an established technology for verification and implementation of integrity and security at personal computers. Similar requirements are also needed for embedded computing platforms which have alike trust and security problems due to the increasing complexity and therefore instability of operating systems and applications as well as connection to the Internet with its security dangers and attacks. Until now the TC standard is mainly targeted for PCs with their large resources of available code space, specific bus interfaces and large computing power which are not available with embedded platforms. As there are a much higher number of embedded computing platforms like PCs in the field, it becomes a necessity to adapt the current TC standard to embedded platforms. The project will make an systematic approach for the development of trusted embedded systems, consisting of hardware platforms with integrated trust components and also work on the necessary trusted operating systems: (A) Trusted hardware, Trusted Platform Module as VHDL design, which could adapted to different host systems together with processors supporting a trust architecture. (B) Trusted operating systems mainly based on the new virtualisation/hypervisor architecture which are already in use at the PC world. Adapting it to the specific requirements of small platforms and trusted modules. (C) Security layers for implementing easy accessible security mechanisms. (D) Trusted protocols: Elementary TC protocols like TSS (Host interface API) and TNC (trusted network connect, an advanced secure communication protocol) will be adapted for embedded platforms. (E) Application examples will give us feedback about available trust functionality, application friendliness and user requirements. For more information please see www.tecom-project.eu.

Technikon is the official coordinator of this 9.9 (nine point nine) million Euro R&D project.

Home Gigabit Access: The OMEGA project will set a global standard for ultra broadband home area networks. The new standard will enable transmission speeds of one gigabit per second (1 Gbps) via heterogeneous communication technologies, including power line communications and wireless connections. Thus, OMEGA aims to make home area networks as easy to use as electricity from the socket, putting an end to the coverage limitations as well as the wiring clutter in the home. With OMEGA’s gigabit home network, users will get easy access to high-bandwidth information and communication services such as telepresence, 3D gaming, enhanced interactivity, virtual reality, high-definition video as well as e-health applications and services for the exchange of user-generated business or multimedia content. . For more information please see www.ict-omega.eu.

Technikon is research partner within this seventeen million Euro R&D project.