GS Group awarded winners of the More than Moore Skolkovo Contest

On December 15, 2014 the GS Group representatives took part in the final pitch session and the ceremony of awarding the winners of the More than Moore contest of hardware projects arranged by the Skolkovo Foundation. Authors of the best projects in the two special categories established by the holding company were awarded valuable prizes and the opportunity to bring their ideas into life on the basis of innovation cluster Technopolis GS in the Kaliningrad region. The event brought together the leading companies in the field of microelectronics, heads of venture capital funds, business angels and representatives of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation.

The GS Venture corporate venture fund, a part of the GS Group holding company, acting as a partner of the More than Moore contest of hardware projects, established two special categories "Breakthrough technology" and "Marketable 3D packaging technology for polycrystalline modules, free of any 3D-TSV drawbacks". The first category nominees were to introduce a solution that drastically cuts the actual size of data storage media while increasing the amount of information and the access rate. Three teams came through to the final to present their projects during the pitch session. Based on its results, the winner was the team from the city of Tyumen that introduced the project of corticomorphic coprocessor CortiphiC to implement hybrid associative computing systems. This project meets the requirements to the maximum extent and, besides that, the authors prepared a presentation that was proper from the standpoint of potential investors and covered all the solution’s strengths. The winners received a valuable prize worth 175 thousand rubles from GS Venture and GS Nanotech (Technopolis GS), and the opportunity to roll out the development of the prototype and release a finished product using the Technopolis GS material and technical base.

The best project within the second nomination was the one related to the development of microelectronic systems 3D packaging presented by a team from Zelenograd. Herewith, according to the jury, the solution which is a significant contribution to the development of 3D-TSV still has technology-related drawbacks what does not actually meet the requirements of the category. In this regard, the project was not recognized as the absolute winner, but the authors received a special prize from the nomination’s founders, as well as the opportunity to have further funding from GS Venture and joint developments on the basis of the GS Nanotech enterprise. The GS Group holding company plans to have a consistent and long-term work with the finalists and winners of the nominations.

"The first All-Russian contest More than Moore is a well-timed initiative to support projects in the field of microelectronics and hardware," – commented Andrew Bezrukov, Director for Strategic Marketing, GS Group. – We believe that today there are opportunities in Russia for a rapid massive breakthrough in this direction. Therefore, it is important to find new startups and project teams and maintain the existing ones. This is a challenging task which requires effective cooperation among Institutes for development, manufacturers and developers, venture funds and research institutes. I hope that we will see the first results of this work in the soonest possible time."

GS Nanotech acting as a co-author of special categories is the leading enterprise in Eastern Europe in integrated circuits back-end developing, packaging and testing. In 2014 R&D Department of the plant developed GS Nanotech SiP Amber S2, the first Russian multi-chip microprocessor under SiP technology (System-in-Package), and launched its mass production. The microprocessor comprises an integrated coprocessor GS Lanthanum designed and manufactured at GS Nanotech, SDRAM DDR3 and NOR FLASH. GS Nanotech SiP Amber S2 microcircuit is the core of modern satellite receivers designed to receive HD channels amongst others. It is planned to release 500 thousand microprocessors of this type by the end of 2014.