Industry is driven by market needs while academia is driven by research. At PRC, we view the application areas based on market needs as being critical, which are then used to drive long term strategic research, but with short term deliverables consistent with industry needs. We believe that such an approach is necessary to be engaged with industry. Our current focus is on three primary applications areas as listed below namely computing, power (which includes computing and automotive), and wireless along with a fourth area on emerging technologies, where we seed new technologies, and roll them into an application area as the technology matures. The application areas drive our research in design, materials, process, assembly, thermal management and system integration, as shown in Figure 1. We use the matrix in the figure to engage industry and academia for identifying and supporting long term research projects and programs. With students and faculty from ECE, ME, MSE, ChBE and CS all working together driven by the application areas and mentored by industry, we address complex inter-disciplinary problems that otherwise would be unsolvable in a typical academic setting.
Figure 1: PRC Application and Research Focus Areas