Research institute for industrial technology

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工業 技術 研究院
Industrial Technology Research Institute Research Institute
for Industrial Technology
(ITRI)
logo
legal form state institute
founding 5th July 1973
Seat Hsinchu , TaiwanTaiwanRepublic of China (Taiwan) 
purpose Applied research
Chair Chi-Liang Lee (李世光), President
Employees 6259 (2019)
(including Ph.D .: 1449, Master: 3688)
Website www.itri.org
ITRI ​​main building
Building complex from the outside

The Research Institute for Industrial Technology or Industrial Technology ( ITRI , Chinese  工業 技術 研究院 , Pinyin Kōgyō gijutsu kenkyū-in , English Industrial Technology Research Institute ) is a research and development institute founded in 1973, whose main location is in the city of Hsinchu in the Republic of China ( Taiwan) is located. ITRI ​​played a key role in Taiwan's transition from a labor-intensive to an innovation-driven high-tech society and in the development of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The ITRI has gained worldwide recognition as a model of a successful, state-controlled industrial development policy.

history

In the early 1970s, those in charge at the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs realized that microelectronics would play an increasingly important role in future industrial development. The decision was made to bundle and concentrate Taiwan's research capacities in this direction. For this purpose, three existing research centers for the chemical industry, minerals and mechanization, all under the direction of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, were merged. After the legislative prerequisites were created, the ITRI was officially founded on July 5, 1973 in Hsinchu.

From the beginning, ITRI was designed as a support or service and development institute for industry. It was not subordinate to the Taiwanese Science Council or the Ministry of Science, but to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In contrast to other science and research institutions in Taiwan, no basic research , but only applied research should be carried out here. The tasks of ITRI lay in five areas: (1) increasing the efficiency and optimization of industrial technologies, (2) developing flexible, commercially applicable and advanced technologies, (3) technology transfer into industry, (4) supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in their technological upgrading, and (5) the education and training of industrial specialists.

From the outset, ITRI attached great importance to the latter point of human resource training. On the one hand, skilled workers (often Taiwanese abroad) were recruited, on the other hand, the institute enabled its employees to continue their academic training in the form of master's programs and doctoral studies and financed scholarships for its employees at top American universities. Initially, the relatively low proportion of highly qualified PhD employees was a problem because ITRI often had to send its employees abroad for further training with expensive scholarships. With the increase in the number of PhD employees in the following decades, the institute's own training programs could be implemented.

Services of the ITRI since its foundation (as of 06/2019)
Startups and Spinoffs 281
Industrial services 18,119
Technology transfer services 613
Patent applications 28,227

Initially, ITRI consisted of three departments with 400 employees, the activities of which were fully funded by a government budget of NT $ 213 million . In the following 20 years, ITRI restructured and refined its organization in interaction with the developing industries in the Taiwanese environment. Great influence on the development of IC -Industrie exercised, founded in 1974 research and development organization for electronics from (Electronics Research and Service Organization, ERSO) of ITRI on the technology import and transfer as well as the training of professionals. A problem in the early decades was the high turnover of the staff, which was due to the fact that much higher salaries were paid in the booming private industry and skilled workers were scarce. The annual employee turnover was 20–30%. A continuous stabilizing factor was the Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, which had an indirect interest in ITRI through the further development of military technology and gave its conscripts (especially students from the top Taiwan universities NTU , NTHU and NCTU ) the opportunity to work at ITRI and in return for longer-term contracts Employment contracts.

In 1994 the Taiwanese government stopped direct financial support and since then ITRI has been financed through direct government contracts or more than half through contract research for private industry.

Significance for the development of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry

Well-known ITRI spin-offs and companies founded in the ITRI environment
year Companies
1980 United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC)
1983 Syntek Semiconductor Ltd
1983 Holtek Semiconductor Inc.
1985 proton
1986 Silicon Integrated Systems
1987 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)
1987 Hualon Microelectronics
1987 Winbond
1988 Taiwan Mask Corporation (TMC)
1990 Etron
1996 Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS)

The ITRI, and in particular the ERSO, exerted a considerable influence on the development of the IC industry in Taiwan through technology import and transfer as well as the training of specialists. In 1976, a cooperation agreement was concluded with the American electronics manufacturer Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which was subsequently used in 1977 to set up a small demonstration production facility for 7.5 µm CMOS components such as those used in electronic clocks , led. This small production facility was continuously optimized and later even exceeded the quality standards of the facilities in the RCA company headquarters. After this success, the first spin-off , United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) was founded in 1980 by outsourcing the entire production facility. In the initial phase, ITRI employees were intensively involved in the technical support of the company, whose systems ran in test operation until 1982. A number of self-developed products were sold to UMC by ITRI at very low prices and many ITRI employees switched to management and the technical development department of UMC. Ultimately, the spin-off was extremely successful. UMC began manufacturing 4-inch wafers in April 1982, turned profitable in November of the same year, and in 1985 was considered the most profitable company among Taiwan's 500 largest privately held companies.

In July 1977 ITRI entered into a further cooperation with the US company International Material Research (IMR), which concerned the technology transfer for the technology of duplicating photomasks . This also ultimately resulted in a spin-off, Taiwan Mask , which was founded in October 1988.

In 1983, ITRI signed a cooperation agreement with Mosel Vitelic , a small company founded by overseas Chinese in the USA, for the joint development of 1.5 µm CMOS and 64K to 256K DRAM memory modules . In 1985 this development goal was achieved and a design center was set up at ITRI to support local manufacturers in the development of IC products and services. In February 1987 the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) was founded as a further offshoot of the ITRI, after a pilot plant for the production of 6-inch VLSI had gone into operation the previous year . Morris Chang , who had been director of ITRI since 1985, played a key conceptual role in the founding . ITRI ​​did everything it could to ensure that the new company (the world's first foundry ) was a success. The entire production facility, which had cost around US $ 100 million in development costs and 5 years of development time, was given to the new company as a "turnkey" solution together with more than 100 fully trained employees. The financing of the business start-up turned out to be problematic, as local companies hesitated to invest despite their previous success with UMC. Eventually, Philips was won as an investor. Morris Chang negotiated with Philips that TSMC would be established as a standalone company rather than an offshoot of Philips. The Taiwanese government held 40% of the initial TSMC shares and Philips held 26.6%. The founding was meticulously planned and in the first two years of its existence the new company generated NT $ 2 billion in profits. In particular, the cooperation with the global electronics group Philips proved to be helpful for the newcomer TSMC.

ITRI ​​booth at Taipei International Inventors and Technology Fair (TINST, 2013)

In the early 1990s, ITRI embarked on a plan to develop a "sub-micron technology" with the aim of again spinning out a company to develop the know-how for 8-inch wafer mass production. However, this plan met with resistance from the now-grown domestic IT companies, who feared that the new company might crowd them out. After long discussions between the government and the private sector, the plan was successfully implemented in close cooperation with local IT companies (including UMC and TSMC) and a 0.35 µm processing platform was developed. With this processing technology, Taiwan was for the first time in the world’s top group in this sector (together with the USA and Japan). In September 1994, Vanguard International Semiconductor was founded as an ITRI spin-off .

In addition to the four mentioned spin-offs, numerous private IT companies founded in the ITRI environment benefited from ITRI's technology transfer. These included the IC design companies Syntek Semiconductor Ltd and Holtek Semiconductor Inc. (both founded in 1983), Proton (1985) and Silicon Integrated Systems (1985). From IC manufacturers Advanced Device Technology Inc. (ADT) (1986), Hualon Microelectronics and Winbond (1987).

ITRI ​​became the training center for a large number of Taiwanese IT specialists. According to ITRI, of the 13,995 former ITRI employees between 1973 and 2000, 11,065 (85%) later worked in industry and only 15% in academic or government institutions - a significantly higher proportion than in comparable institutions in the USA or other countries .

The Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing industry grew from 1987-2000
1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
Number of companies 4th 6th 6th 8th 10 10 10 11 12 15th 17th 20th 21st 16
Profits (NT $ billion) 3.8 4.4 7.6 9.08 16.79 23.46 41.5 70.0 119.3 125.6 153.2 169.4 264.9 468.6
Growth rate (%) 5.5 15.8 72.7 19.5 84.9 39.7 76.9 68.7 70.4 5.3 22.0 10.6 56.4 76.9
Production capacity (µm) 2.0 1.5 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.5 0.45 0.35 0.3 0.25 0.18 0.13

Branch offices and international offices

In Taiwan, ITRI has, in addition to its headquarters in Hsinchu, a branch in the Da'an district of Taipei , as well as three campuses in the Liujia and Annan districts of Tainan , and in the city of Nantou .

ITRI ​​has five international offices: in Tokyo, San José (California) , Berlin, Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Moscow.

organization

ITRI ​​is currently (2019) organized into six research laboratories :

  1. Research laboratories for biomedical technology and equipment ( Biomedical Technology and Device Research Laboratories )
  2. Research laboratories for Green Energy and Environment ( Green Energy and Environment Research Laboratories )
  3. Chemical and Materials Research Laboratories ( Material and Chemical Research Laboratories )
  4. Research laboratories for mechanics and mechatronics ( Mechanical and Mechatronics Systems Research Laboratories )
  5. Research laboratories for information and communication technology ( Information and Communications Research Laboratories )
  6. Research laboratories for electronics and optoelectronics ( Electronic and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratories )

There are also eight centers :

  1. Center for Measurement Standards ( Center for Measurement Standards )
  2. Center for service system technology ( Service Systems Technology Center )
  3. International Strategy Center of Industry, Science and Technology ( Industry, Science and Technology International Strategy Center )
  4. Center for Intelligent Microsystems Technology ( Smart Microsystems Technology Center )
  5. Center for Laser Technology and Additive Manufacturing ( Laser and Additive Manufacturing Technology Center )
  6. Center for Computational Intelligence technology ( Computational Intelligence Technology Center )
  7. Center for Technology Transfer and legal aspects ( Technology Transfer and Law Center )
  8. Center for commercialization and industrial services ( Commercialization and Industry Service Center )

Web links

Commons : ITRI  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d About us> Publication: ITRI Introduction. ITRI ​​website, July 26, 2019, accessed on August 2, 2019 .
  2. ^ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China [Taiwan] (Ed.): 2018–19 TAIWAN at a glance . ISBN 978-986-05-7450-0 ( online [PDF]).
  3. ↑ Taiwanese companies win Top 100 Global Innovators Award in 2014. Taiwan today, January 28, 2015; accessed August 1, 2019 .
  4. ↑ France and Taiwan expand cooperation. Science portal of the French Embassy in Germany, October 20, 2016, accessed on August 1, 2019 (English).
  5. ^ Parwez Farsan: New memory cards from Taiwan. computerbase.de, August 10, 2004, accessed on August 1, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Imaginative newbie. Taiwan today, July 1, 1996; accessed August 1, 2019 .
  7. ^ A b c Charles W. Wessner (Ed.): 21st Century Manufacturing: The Role of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program (2013) . The National Academies Press, ISBN 978-0-309-29117-0 , Appendix A3 Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute: A Cradle of Future Industries, doi : 10.17226 / 18448 (English, online ).
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ming-ping Huang: The Silicon Dragon: High-tech Industry in Taiwan . Ed .: Terence Tsai, Borshiuan Cheng. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84064-240-7 , Chapter 2: 'The cradle of Technology': the Industrial Technology Research Institute, pp. 26–40 (English, online ).
  9. ↑ ITRI ​​TODAY No. 73. 2013, accessed on August 3, 2019 .
  10. ^ The Silicon Dragon , p. 9
  11. ^ A b Organization List. ITRI ​​website, 2019, accessed on August 2, 2019 .