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Acer aligns with chip designer

Acer Inc (宏電), has joined forces with a leading US integrated circuit (IC) chip-design company to form an information-technology institute designed to pump out Taiwan's next generation of computer-technology professionals.

"This is the first IC-design research and development center in Taiwan," Acer president Stan Shih (施振榮) said at the opening ceremony. "IC design will be one of the most important aspects of the IT industry in the future."

The US partner, Cadence Design Systems Inc, has also invested in a similar venture in China.

The new IC design institute, housed in Acer's Aspire Research Complex that was opened in August, is expected to train around 200 graduate students next year. The first class starts in January, and is already almost full. While both Shih and Cadence's president Ray Bingham stressed that graduates of the programs were not under any obligation to work for either company, analysts have suggested they might offer incentives to bag the best talent.

Cadence in particular will need the new talent. Its Taiwan operation is already having difficulty recruiting engineers with analog experience.

"We are finding it hard to find engineers," said Al Feng (馮元掄), marketing manager at Cadence's Taiwan branch.

Because of a lack of expertise, he said, Cadence had to train many of the engineers it recruited in analog technology.

The school will draw electronic engineering graduates and also experienced IC design engineers, software developers and system designers.

The academic credentials students receive have yet to be decided, but instructors are to come from Hsinchu's National Chiao Tung University and the government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute.

Cadence will provide foreign educators, field assistant engineers, software and materials for courses, and Acer will provide the facilities and the hardware.

Demand for mixed-signal chips, which combine both digital and analog features, is expected to increase dramatically over the next four years, researchers said.

In order to communicate with each other and the Internet, mobile phones, personal organizers and laptop computers need analog features in their component chips. Now at 20 percent, the proportion of mixed-signal chips will rise to over 70 percent in 2006, according to Gartner Group.

Cadence designs 80 percent of the world's mixed-signal chips. A worldwide shortage of combined digital and analog engineering talent puts the complex in a unique market position.

"This is a classic bottleneck," Bingham said. "The opportunity we are trying to create today will have a direct impact on the lives of students interested in this field and the businesses that will grow as a result."

US-based high-tech companies have long looked to Taiwan's talent pool.

"I am concerned that the US can't catch up in chip design. I have worked in both China and Taiwan and I'm impressed with the focus both countries are bringing to IC design," Bingham said.

Taiwan recognized the need for engineering talent in the 1980s and invested in tech education.

"Taiwan has gone from a position of following the US and Europe to a position of leadership," Bingham said. "This is because of education."

Decrying the state of engineering education in the US as "a pitiful story," Bingham said that China was producing 600,000 engineers each year, with 200,000 of those graduating in computer science and electronic engineering. In the US this figure is only 80,000, and a majority of them are foreign students.

Facing the hollowing out of the local manufacturing base, the government has been urging the IT industry to team up with foreign companies to improve their research and development capabilities. Taiwan lacks sufficient high-tech professionals and the government has charged the institute with the task of setting up a series of programs to produce up to 50,000 high-tech experts by 2006.
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