Editorial 3Q96
Commercial results of EU-funding
Research and development is important to keep your company headed towards
the future.A research budget of ac ompany is surely one that will be questioned
first in years when revenues are unstable.
A solution might be to seek some funding. One of the large funding organisations
is the European Union. In the last four years a total ofECU 12.3 billion
has been spent. Information Technology (IT) & Communication projects
accounted for ECU 3.405 billion or 28%, of which IT (ESPRITprojects) amounted
to 57 % or ECU 1.932 billion. These ESPRITprojects offer an interesting sub-topic
for real-time applications: the Open Microprocessor
Initiative (OMI) covered ECU 172 million during the last 4 years.
I have always questioned this kind offunding and I will probably not be
alone.
Does this funding result in real products for every-day use? To what
extent is it influencing the technology trends for the future ?
In order to answer these questions I have started to monitor the public meetings
and conferences on OMI. Surprise, surprise
- our tax money is well-spent. For the time being, a lot of effort goes into
the development of silicon. Although software issues have been slightly
overlooked, a change of policy can be expected for the future.
It is not sufficient to fund the development of new products. One must also
promote the use of these products, get them out of the labs and commercialise
life. OMI staff has been appointed to promote
more intensively the use of new developments.
In this magazine we intend to make a contribution to this promotional campaign
and show you some of the results of this OMI
effort.
Euro-sceptics, who are invited to study this issue in detail, will
discover that a tremendous amount of work has been done and that results
are worthwhile looking at.
This edition would not have been possible without the cooperation of Tony
Gore from OMI. Hence why I wish to thank
him for the great help he has been. The quality of his work reflects the
seriousness which OMI is aiming to the
future with.
Dr
Martin Timmerman