Collaborative Verification Along the Entire Value-Added Chain; "SANITAS" Research Project Launched Under Management of Infineon

Neubiberg, Germany – December 16, 2009 – A research project to strengthen German competiveness by developing processes and verification methods for more flexible and secure automated manufacturing has been launched by leading German companies. The SANITAS (”Enabling safer systems by a new collaborative verification methodology across the entire value chain”) project includes nine partners – research institutes and companies from the semiconductor, automotive and industrial automation sectors – that will work under the project management of the Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY) to complete research by September 2012. The SANITAS project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

The work carried out within the SANITAS project will create a basis for increasing the flexibility of complex microelectronics-aided systems, for example, in production automation and automotive electronics. One goal is to develop a collaborative verification methodology that can be applied beginning as early as in the development phase of system components and carried through the entire value-added chain; from the semiconductor provider to the system manufacturer whose production facilities use the newly developed chips. The benefit of the verification methodology is that faults can be detected even before production of the system components.

Project results will be applied in the industrial automation sector, for example, where the advantages deriving from SANITAS are manifold. For example, the application of the verification methodology throughout the value-added chain enables automatic analyses to determine whether technical specifications can be implemented. The project partners will also be working on new modeling processes that should allow suppliers to develop virtual reference models of their components. Using these models, system manufacturers can ”assemble” their production systems on a computer to test and correct them before actually constructing the systems. The developed methods are also intended for use in areas other than industrial automation – for example, in the communication and automotive sectors.

The SANITAS project is funded to an amount of about Euro 7.3 million by the BMBF as part of the German government's High-tech Strategy and its Information and Communication Technology 2020 (ICT 2020) Program. The goal of the ICT 2020 Program is, among others, to extend the development of electronic systems as ”enabling” technology for electronics.

SANITAS project partners

The SANITAS project partners are from the areas of semiconductor and automotive technology, industrial automation and research: Forschungszentrum Informatik (Research Center for Information Technology), Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS), Infineon Technologies AG, Micronas GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, Siemens AG, Tieto Deutschland GmbH, and the German universities of Bremen and Paderborn.

Infineon Technologies AG, Neubiberg, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions addressing three central challenges to modern society: energy efficiency, communications, and security. In the 2009 fiscal year (ending September), the company reported sales of 3.03 billion euro with approximately 25,650 employees worldwide. With a global presence, Infineon operates through its subsidiaries in the U.S. from Milpitas, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore, and in Japan from Tokyo. Infineon is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX) and in the USA on the over-the-counter market OTCQX International Premier (ticker symbol: IFNNY).