CISSOID Joins PRIMES

CISSOID, the leader in high-temperature and high-reliability semiconductor solutions, announced today it has joined PRIMES, the research center for power electronics based in Tarbes, France. Founded in 2001, PRIMES is a research and innovation platform gathering tier-1 players of the industry and five academic research laboratories. PRIMES activities focus on power electronics, power integration and energy management. Industrial members include companies like Alstom, Schneider Electric, Hispano-Suiza (Safran-Power), EADS IW, Freescale, Cirtem, Epsilon Ingénierie, Boostec, SCT, and Aquitaine Électronique. For PRIMES, a critical issue is to increase dramatically the integration level and the power density of the power components and power modules in order to enable more compact and more energy-efficient power converters, with reduced cooling systems, while increasing system reliability. The new emerging power components like SiC or GaN federate a significant portion of the research activities of PRIMES partners. As such, PRIMES has identified the high temperature as a major focus for its upcoming research, and CISSOID will take a key role in this activity, bringing its expertise and knowledge. "With its focus on high temperature and system integration, PRIMES' research directions are right in line with CISSOID' technology and product roadmaps" said Tony Denayer, CISSOID' CEO. "Becoming a member of the consortium was therefore a natural decision and we are eager to join PRIMES, a recognized innovation platform with best-in-class researchers and leading partners on the international stage." Tony Denayer added: "This decision was made at CISSOID at a time when the company is seeing a clear increase of its revenues". Within PRIMES, CISSOID is planning on various research programs focusing on two key technological directions of the company: The embedded power supplies (voltage regulators ICs and low power DC-DC converters) and power conversion (with discrete, wide-bandgap components, as well as isolated gate driver ICs and sub-systems for high power converters). Alain Jullien, PRIMES' president declared "We are pleased to welcome a European partner with whom we are going to strengthen our strategy, aiming at developing high temperature solutions that will bring competitiveness gains to our industrial partners, by consolidating research focus with the associated laboratories" A real win-win scenario. www.cissoid.com