Prof. Dr.-Ing. Erich Barke

”For a number of years up to 2015, I had a role in the scientific support of the staff at IMMS as a member of their Scientific Advisory Board. Since 2014, IMMS has been working jointly with my Department on the ANCONA cluster research project, which focusses on analogue coverage in nano-electronics.

Among the developments for which the Department I led at Hannover was responsible are (among other things) methods of researching the parameters by which this analogue coverage can be quantified. These need to be capable of indicating how completely all the relevant operational cases for an analogue circuit have been verified, and with what degree of certainty. The Erfurt branch of IMMS is involved in finding methods by which there can be automatic integration of, for example, parasitic coupling into the models at system level and into the methods by which the models can be efficiently simulated.

It has already been possible for us in Hannover to use design data from the IMMS ASICs after processing in the validation of our approaches. Reciprocally, the Erfurt staff have been able to make use of the knowledge they have gained by means of our efficient simulation methodology, which goes by the name of PRAISE. Not only the excellent collaboration in the project with its personal and professional exchanges but also the publication success we have together achieved bring me much pleasure.

Over and above this, my activity on their Scientific Advisory Board has enabled me to follow with interest the progress IMMS has been making in the blending of microelectronic and micromechanical methods to achieve a fully combined design system for MEMS. From the standpoint of design automation, the IMMS approach has so far been crowned with great success. The future of MEMS will only be secure if these systems can be developed and produced with the readily available aid of such comprehensive design methodology. Even if the application of the methodology will in principle be the task of commercial EDA companies, the contribution made to the solution of the problem by the pure research of such institutions as IMMS is not to be underestimated. In Germany, quite particularly, outstanding expertise on MEMS is to be found. The EDA companies, based mainly in America, can and must profit from this expertise, a fact which assigns to IMMS a cutting-edge role. On MEMS, the Institute has, namely, particular know-how not only on general development but also on the specification and implementation of the necessary design methodology.

As IMMS continues along this route, I wish everybody much academic success and, on the business front, commercial prosperity.“