The goal of the PRIME project is to establish an open Ultra Low Power (ULP) Technology Platform containing all necessary design and architecture blocks and components which could enable the European industry to increase and strengthen their competitive and leading eco-system and benefit from market opportunities created by the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. Over 3 years the project will develop and demonstrate the key building blocks of IoT ULP systems driven by the applications in the medical, agricultural, domestics and security domains. This will include development of high performance, energy efficient and cost effective technology platform, flexible design ecosystem (including IP and design flow), changes in architectural and power management to reduced energy consumption, security blocks based on PUF and finally the System of Chip and System in Package memory banks and processing implementations for IoT sensor node systems. Developped advanced as 22nm FDSOI low power technologies with logic, analog, RF and embedded new memory components (STT RAM and RRAM) together with innovative design and system architecture solutions will be used to build macros and demonstrate functionality and power reduction advantage of the new IoT device components. The PRIME project will realize several demonstrators of IoT system building blocks to show the proposed low power wireless solutions, functionality and performance of delivered design and technology blocks. The consortium semiconductor ecosystem (IDMs, design houses, R&D, tools & wafer suppliers, foundries, system/product providers) covers complementarily all desired areas of expertise to achieve the project goals. The project will enable an increase in Europe’s innovation capability in the area of ULP Technology, design and applications, creation of a competitive European eco-system and help to identify market leadership opportunities in security, mobility, healthcare and smart cost competitive manufacturing.

The SILENSE project will focus on using smart acoustic technologies and ultrasound in particular for Human Machine- and Machine to Machine Interfaces. Acoustic technologies have the main advantage of a much simpler, smaller, cheaper and easier to integrate transducer. The ambition of this project is to develop and improve acoustic technologies beyond state-of-the-art and extend its application beyond the mobile domain to Smart Home & Buildings and Automotive domains. In this project, it will be proven that acoustics can be used as a touchless activation and control mechanism, by improvement or development of different smart acoustic technology blocks (hardware, software and system level) and integrate these blocks at system level. At technology level, the SILENSE project will: - Adapt and improve cost, performance, directivity and power consumption of (MEMS) acoustic transducers (incl. testing and qualification) - Heterogeneously integrate arrays of acoustic transducers with other electronics, using advanced (3D) packaging concepts - Develop smart algorithms for acoustical sensing, localization and communication - Combine voice and gesture control by means of the same transducer(s) At application level the SILENSE project will: - Apply acoustical sensing for touchless activation/control of mobile devices, wearables and, more in general, IoT nodes. The project links to Smart Systems Integration (B4), and refers also to application application-related topics, such as Smart Mobility and Smart Society. The application scope of the developed technologies is broader and comprises more societal domains, such as smart home/buildings, smart factories (i.e. Smart Production) and even Smart Health. Furthermore, a clear cross reference with Semiconductor Process, Equipment and Materials (B1) is established in view of the heterogeneous integration of technology blocks. Conventional silicon technologies will be combined with printed (flexible, large area electronics).

Global environmental issues, social inequality and geopolitical changes will pose numerous problems for our society in the future. To face these new challenges and deal with them, there is a need to understand and appropriately utilize new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and biotechnologies. A-IQ Ready proposes cutting-edge quantum sensing, edge continuum orchestration of AI and distributed collaborative intelligence technologies to implement the vision of intelligent and autonomous ECS for the digital age. Quantum magnetic flux and gyro sensors enable highest sensitivity and accuracy without any need for calibration, offer unmatched properties when used in combination with a magnetic field map. Such a localization system will enhance the timing and accuracy of the autonomous agents and will reduce false alarms or misinformation by means of AI and multi-agent system concepts. As a priority, the communication guidance and decision making of groups of agents need to be based on cutting-edge technologies. Edge continuum orchestration of AI will allow decentralizing the development of applications, while ensuring an optimal use of the available resources. Combined with the quantum sensors, the edge continuum will be equipped with innovative, multi-physical capabilities to sense the environment, generating “slim” but accurate measurements. Distributed intelligence will enable emergent behavior and massive collaboration of multiple agents towards a common goal. By exploring the synergies of these cutting-edge technologies through civil safety and security, digital health, smart logistics for supply chains and propulsion use cases, A-IQ Ready will provide the basis for the digital society in Europe based on values, moving towards the ideal of Society 5.0.

CLEVER proposes a series of innovations in the area of hardware accelerators, design stack, and middleware software that revolutionize the ability of edge computing platforms to operate federatedly, leveraging sparse resources that are coordinated to create a powerful swarm of resources. CLEVER technologies will support the deep edge computing paradigm, moving computing services closer to the end user or the source of the data to reduce power consumption, reduce capacity requirements, and latency for mission critical applications. Furthermore, CLEVER will overcome traditional limitations of edge computing in terms of limited resource availability by providing an effective framework for seamless use of federated resources in the edge-cloud continuum. CLEVER will demonstrate processing solutions for AI at the edge through four use cases: (1) digital twin for in-factory optimization, (2) smart agriculture for high yield eco-farms, (3) fully automated material deployment, and (4) augmented reality for shopping sites. Through the achievement of its goals, the CLEVER project will help to position Europe at the forefront of the intelligent edge computing field, enabling growth across many sectors (manufacturing, agriculture, smart environments, augmented reality, and others). By lowering the barriers for utilising edge computing for artificial intelligence applications, CLEVER will open the door for European Industries and SMEs to leverage state of the art technologies, driving their development and growth as leaders in their sectors.

In the field of the Electronic Integrated circuit design, the analog-mixed-signal (AMS) physical design of all analog blocks and of whole integrated circuits (IC) based on the Analog-on-Top approach still uses a handmade flow. The Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry has been working since several years in the application of techniques to make better design and verification tools ranging from synthesis to place & route, timing analysis, analog design and circuit simulations. The AMBEATion consortium will utilize a holistic approach which applies these enhanced tools to categories of designs (i.e. Smart Systems) and drives them through “scriptware” and methodologies which will further enhance the productivity of designers in the design automation of these complex low power devices. Essential strategy of the ambitious multidisciplinary program is the Transfer of Knowledge between the partners and the training of a focused team of researchers on the algorithm developments and their application to the industrial state of the art AMS Back End design flow. The main outcomes of this AMBEATion project will be: i) highly increase designers’ productivity in the area of mixed signal designs (primarily AMS Backend) addressing the needs of industrial users, ii) possibly reduce the silicon products costs as a consequence increase the European industry competitiveness, iii) provide the academies with new advanced training topics aligned with high tech employer’s needs, iv) set the basis of a long lasting technical partnership between European research and design centers.