LONDON — Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO), a microelectronics and semiconductor industrial park being set up in the middle-eastern Emirate of Dubai, has reached a supply agreement with Circuits-Multi-Projets (CMP), to gain access to leading-edge process technology from STMicroelectronics.

The DSO said the deal also involves technology transfer to Dubai and that it intends to broker out access to 90-nm manufacturing across the Middle-East and Africa, although this is likely to be academics initially.

CMP, which is not related to CMP Media LLC, the publisher of EE Times in print and www.eetimes.com online, is a semi-academic organization that traditionally serves as a source of chip manufacturing and packaging for organizations that are too small to engage directly with chip manufacturers, such as universities, research laboratories and small to medium size enterprises. It organizes multi-project wafer runs for silicon manufacturing at Austriamicrosystems and STMicroelectronics on processes ranging from 0.6-micron down to 90-nm, for gallium arsenide manufacturing by OMMIC and for MEMS manufacture from Memscap SA.

The agreement between CMP and DSO is set to provide the startups and design groups locating in Dubai with access to 90-nanometer process technology in the form of the eight-layer metal CMOS process known as CMOS090 from STMicroelectronics, which is offered by CMP (Grenoble, France).

The terms of the deal between CMP and DSO were not revealed in detail.

However, access to 90-nm process technology is covered under the terms of the agreement and involves “technology transfer to the UAE”, the DSO said in a statement. Indeed, the agreement is the first covering technology transfer to the UAE but is unlikely to be the last, the DSO added.

As a result of this agreement the DSO claimed it would become a one-stop-shop service for universities and academic institutions as well as design centers in a region covering the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and all countries in Africa.

“This is the first French company in the technology industry to be associated with DSO. We greatly appreciate this relationship and look forward to associations with a variety of European, American and Asian companies to obtain the best technology worldwide,” said Mohammed Al Zarouni, vice chairman of the DSO, in a statement. “The agreement with CMP is a great step forward that will benefit both organizations and help us in achieving our objective of transferring technology to the region,” he added.

“With the deployment of Synopsys industry-standard EDA tools to the local as well as to regional universities, the DSO agreement with CMP facilitates the fabrication and packaging of chip designs that are research or students-projects based,” stated Eesa Bastaki, director, of technology and development at DSO, in the same statment. “Companies affiliated with DSO will also benefit from this agreement in volume production of their designs.”

Juergen Knorr, chief executive officer of Siemens semiconductor division prior to the division's spin-off as Infineon Technologies AG, was appointed chief executive officer of Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO), in June 2005. The microelectronics and semiconductor park is expected to have an overall cost of $1.3 billion.