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EC to Spend Billions for Industrial R&D on Embedded

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Just before CeBIT opened, the European Commission launched a €2.5 billion Joint Technology Initiative called ARTEMIS to address embedded computer systems that – while running almost unnoticed by users – improve the performance of all kinds of machines: from cars, planes and phones, to factories, washing machines and televisions.

An enormous opportunity for systems integrators that shifts commercial attention to industrial B2B commerce, more than 4 billion embedded processors were sold last year with the global market worth €60 billion and growing annually at rates near 14%. Forecasts predict more than 16 billion embedded devices by 2010 and over 40 billion by 2020.

The share of embedded systems in the value of final products is expected to continue to rise in key industrial sectors (e.g., by 2010 over 35% of the value of your auto will be attributable to embedded electronics).

"Invisible computers embedded in all devices of industrial application can have a tremendously positive impact on Europe's economy", says Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "…This is why €2.5 billion of European public and private research investment into embedded system over 10 years is very worthwhile, ensuring that European technology remains at the forefront worldwide..."

To promote economies of scale, cost savings and much shorter times to market for products based on embedded computer technologies, and to keep European industry at the forefront of global developments in these fields, the EU is pioneering this entirely new way of funding research in Europe.

The Commission and the EU Member States who wish to participate will pool their public funding with universities and industry, including many innovative SMEs, by setting up a public-private partnership.

While research funding in embedded systems so far tends to be fragmented in small projects funded by individual Member States and agencies, the new "open" consortium – under the name ARTEMIS – allows Member States and the Commission to co-operate and co-finance pan-European research initiatives focused on a strategic agenda set by Industry itself. ARTEMISIA, the Artemis Industrial Association currently has more than a hundred members (50% R&D organisations, 22% SMEs and 28% corporate members).

ARTEMIS will be fully operational within the next few months as organisations based in Brussels with their own rules, own staff, premises and budgets. Their tasks will include coordinating research through calls for proposals and funding of research projects of European scale.

The European Commission also launched a second Joint Technology Initiative called ENIAC which targets nanoelectronics.

For more information on Joint Technology Initiatives, see:

http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/jtis/ind_jti_en.html#eniac
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/jtis/ind_jti_en.html#artemis