In California, experts in digital imaging have developed a powerful technique that will allow high resolution video to be obtained from sequences captured using a lower resolution camera. In France, another group of digital imaging experts has developed a cost-effective and robust method of protecting digital videos by embedding digital watermarks in the video stream. In Naples, a group of mathematicians, engineers and computer architects is developing advanced models, algorithms and chip architectures for intelligent vehicle suspension systems.

Nothing remarkable about this - except that these are all among the many different kinds of research conducted by ST. The days when a semiconductor supplier simply designed and/or manufactured semiconductors have long gone; today, the most successful System-on-Chip companies are doing pioneering research in areas that would previously have been considered irrelevant to the business of designing and manufacturing semiconductor components. Yet, as three of the articles in this issue show, this type of research is not a luxury; instead it is an essential part of ensuring that the products, architectures and methodologies that ST develops are exactly those that give our customers a winning edge.

Another article illustrates one of the practical outcomes of this approach - ST’s new Nomadik ® multimedia processor. The “brute force” approach to multimedia processing is to increase the processing power but this also tends to increase cost and power consumption - two things that are at a premium in the mobile phone industry. Thanks to its expertise in audio and video algorithms, ST was able to conceive and implement a novel architecture that delivers both unsurpassed audio and video quality and ultra-low power consumption for longer battery operation.

However, semiconductor technology always remains our core competence and, as another article in this issue demonstrates, we are continually pushing the state-of-the-art, not only in the mainstream CMOS platform but also in “exotic” additions such as RF-MEMS.