Infineon To Expand ADAS R&D

Article By : Nitin Dahad

The company has broken ground in Austria on a new facility dedicated to developing chips for ADAS

Infineon has broken ground on a new building in Linz, Austria, that will expand its research and development center for radar sensors, which currently focuses on 77 GHZ radar chips for driver assistance systems.

The Linz site, which is operated by Infineon Austria holding company DICE (Danube Integrated Circuit Engineering), will focus on radar chips and other semiconductors for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). DICE was created in 1999 as a spin-off from Johannes Keppler University Linz, and Infineon became an investor in 2000, now holding a 72% stake in DICE. The new building will consolidate two different smaller sites into a larger site in Linz, and add another 220 jobs by the summer of 2020, taking the total number of employees to 400.

The Austrian center has a strong emphasis on high-frequency technologies, according to Sabine Herlitschka, CEO of Infineon Technologies Austria AG. She added, “The local education institutions and research players provide a strong regional knowledge environment that enables outstanding innovations.”

Infineon said it has sold more than 100 million 77 GHz radar chips and had launched a 77 GHz radar chip on silicon-germanium technology back in 2009. Radar sensors are essential in distance warning and automatic emergency braking systems and are likely to play a key part ADAS and autonomous driving.

Infineon's new Linz site gets going. From left to right: Manfred Ruhmer, executive director DICE, Peter Schiefer, president automotive division Infineon Technologies AG, Sabine Herlitschka, CEO Infineon Technologies Austria AG, Gerhard Riess and Peter Zeiner, Executive Directors DICE. (Source: Infineon)