As IC design towards system-level integration , it is necessary to provide a new design methodology and environment to cope with design complexity as well as provide competitive solutions . Based on the experience from last decade , CIC is now moving into a new design era. That is , standing on the current basis and looking into the coming future where the country demands , CIC will put more efforts on developing system-level design environment . In addition to maintain current support for the academia , CIC also has to develop a systematic system design environment to meet the needs of nationwide IC design industry focus , especially in SoC track.

1. SoC Drive

　　To drive the SoC research , CIC sets up a few promotion guidelines by taking into account both nationwide research resources and industry demands . They are indicated below:

　　Joint development of system design environment : CIC is going to carry out an internal SoC project to create a system design environment based on available CAD toolboxes . In the meantime , a few SoC research projects sponsored by National Science Council are under investigation . Together with these activities , it is expected that SoC design methodology and design flow can be derived to meet the need of nationwide IC design industry development . There is one thing should be pointed is that CIC will integrate the system design research results and again feedback technology transfer to both industry and academia .

　　 MPC services via foundry shuttle : Due to the very expensive SoC manufacturing cost , it's better to exploit shuttle provided by foundry . In this way , total mask and wafer cost can be shared by all customers from academia , research institutions , and industry . Of course , R&D risk can be reduced through this approach too . This proposal is very important in reducing SoC and IP research cost . Hence more research projects will have the opportunity for silicon proof . In addition , CIC will also set up a common SoC test and measurement center for all related SoC design .

　　Construction of Nationwide IP center : Since IP’s are very important in speeding up SoC design , a complete IP data base will provide all the needs requested by related SoC research . Out-sourcing commercial IP’s is one possibility is to leverage academic resources to enlarge IP data base , where academia focuses on innovative designs and CIC is in charge of IP wrapping and re-use issues .