East China’s Jiangsu province ranked second in China in research and experimental development funding in 2022, according to figures released by the provincial authorities recently.
In July, the first EDA National Innovation Center in China was unveiled in Nanjing Jiangbei New Area. Industry, academia, and research forces from across the country will gather here to tackle the EDA bottlenecks.
At the EDA National Innovation Center, R&D technicians and experts from leading EDA enterprises are working together with experts and professors from Southeast University to accelerate research work.
Unlike general research institutions, the EDA National Innovation Center has been focusing on linking the industry and academia since its establishment in a bid to work together to create the EDA "national team". Within a few months of its establishment, it has already conducted three key research projects.
The EDA National Innovation Center has also relied on universities to promote the construction of EDA interdisciplinary courses, invites enterprises to jointly carry out industrial talent cultivation, and promotes the sustainable development of the EDA industry.
“We have integrated the upstream and downstream advantageous resources of EDA, forming a national and global research force, and turning the National Innovation Center into a first-class technology innovation center, talent training base, and industrial incubation hub, contributing to the self-reliance and self-reliance of China's EDA industry,” said Bu Aiguo, Researcher at EDA National Innovation Center.
The unveiling of the EDA National Innovation Center marks the beginning of the vigorous development of technological innovation in Jiangsu, demonstrating Jiangsu's confidence and determination in building an industrial technological innovation center with global influence.
While relying on national level platforms to launch research on key core technologies, Jiangsu has also injected strong impetus into independent innovation for enterprises through institutional innovation.
Manufacturing equipment for high-quality single crystal layers is the core and highly profitable link of the third-generation semiconductor industry chain, with high technological barriers. Through independent research and development, Core Third Generation Semiconductor Technology Suzhou Co., Ltd. has successfully achieved the domestic replacement of this equipment, filling the gap in the field of high-end third-generation semiconductor equipment in China.
“When comparing with our foreign counterparts, many of our technologies are superior. Our temperature control is more stable, and the cost of a single chip can be reduced by 40%. The cost-effectiveness advantage is very obvious,” said Pu Yong, CTO of Third Generation Semiconductor Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd.
Less than three years after its establishment, the third generation of chips has entered the mass production stage from research and development, and has developed rapidly, thanks to the innovative ecosystem of "tolerating failure and encouraging innovation" that Jiangsu has advocated.
Jiangsu Provincial Industrial Technology Research Institute has applied for a provincial-level financial fund of 20 million yuan for the third generation of chips. Since the beginning of this year, the Provincial Institute of Industry and Technology has invested 1.4 billion yuan to implement 43 forward-looking technological innovation projects in industries such as gallium nitride epitaxial wafers and aviation engine single crystal blades.
“The technology funding provided by the combination of funding and investment has helped us bear the earliest R&D risks by giving full play to the support of financial funds for technological innovation projects, and ensuring the leadership of our team in the early R&D stage,” said Shi Jianxin, Chairman and CEO of Third Generation Semiconductor Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd.
“We have sorted out and collected corporate challenges, identified over 100 core key technologies from them, gathered resources to tackle them by inviting a group of top experts from around the world to serve as our project managers, and built a group of industry technology research and development institutes that have global influence so as to have contributed to the construction of an industry technology innovation center with global influence in Jiangsu,” said Liu Qing, President of Jiangsu Provincial Industrial Technology Research Institute and Director of the Yangtze River Delta National Technology Innovation Center.
Statistics show that in 2022, Jiangsu recorded 383.5 billion yuan in research and experimental development funds, ranking second in the country in total, with an increase growth of 11.5%.
