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NEWS RELEASE - Temasek Professorship
The Engineering Faculty of the National University of Singapore
(NUS) and the NSTB (National Science & Technology Board) are
pleased to announce the faculty's first award recipient of the Temasek
Professorship Scheme. The Engineering Faculty has been given S$11
million by the NSTB for the setting up of a new state-of-the-art
clean room facility in the NUS by one of the world's top microelectronics
researchers, Professor Dim-Lee Kwong of the University of Texas
in Austin.
This research project will help to put Singapore in the forefront
of the pioneering field of an entirely new generation of silicon
integrated circuit (IC) microchips for the semiconductor industry
here. This research project into the next generation of ICs will
result in super fast chips with a super large memory capacity. The
individual components on the c hips will be smaller, thus making
the IC chips even more compact. All these will be realized at prices
no more than those of the current generation of microchips.
This new technology will have tremendous impact on the economy
and the man-in-the-street as microchips are found in a whole range
of consumer products such as computers, digital cameras and cellular
phones.
The Temasek research project was launched by the Dean of Engineering,
Professor Ng Wun Jern on 7 April 2001.
BACKGROUND
Only about four years ago, the Economic Development Board (EDB)
decided to make Singapore a major centre of wafer fabrication. The
microchip industry is a critical part of Singapore's strategy to
remain competitive as a manufacturing centre.
Singapore has the world's third largest independent wafer fab (fabrication)
foundry. At present, there are about a dozen wafer fab plants in
the island nation. The EDB is targeting a total of 25.
Professor Dim-Lee Kwong, who heads the Microelectronics
Research Centre at the University of Texas in Austin, is one of
the world's top research professors in silicon IC processing technology.
He is heading a team of 25 top researchers from the faculty's Electrical
& Computer Engineering Department, in collaboration with our
industry partner, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (CSM), which
is the semiconductor arm of the Singapore Technologies Group of
companies.
OBJECTIVES
With intense global competition, the Engineering Faculty is very
aware of the urgency of filling the critical needs of transforming
Singapore into a knowledge-based economy. This pioneering research
project will help to open new doors in microelectronics research.
At the same time, the faculty is contributing its part to help build
the National University of Singapore into a world-class research
university that draws top research engineers and scientists capable
of working in partnership with the best in industry and post-doctoral
students in its campus.
THE PROJECT
This exciting and bold initiative by the Engineering Faculty in
the research of new super microchip technology has tremendous implications
for the nation's wealth creation as it opens a whole new field of
silicon IC technology.
No longer will IC chip technology be called by the traditional
terminology, "microelectronics", but "nanoelectronics".
In a few years, the transistors in these chips will be even more
minute because it will be measured in nanometer instead of micrometer.
While one micrometer is 1/1 million metre, one nanometer is 1/1billion
metre - much finer than a strand of human hair and invisible to
the naked eye!
ISSUED BY THE OFFICE OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
APRIL 2, 2001
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