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Ambitious chip-designing project will start small
Tuesday, June 08, 1999 By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Project Renaissance, a state-led effort to create a cluster of chip designers and electronics firms in Western Pennsylvania, is expected to get its start tomorrow, with a handful of employees and $250,000 in start-up funds from two Japanese companies.
Gov. Ridge is expected to unveil the plan at a news conference tomorrow morning. Joining Ridge at the Phipps Conservatory will be officials from the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University.
Helping to launch the project are two Japanese giants, Sony Corp. and Oki Electronics, a $5.7 billion telecommunications company that makes printers, fax machines, integrated circuits and components for wireless and fiber-optic systems.
Oki is expected to pledge about $100,000. Sony is contributing $150,000. The amount will be used as "seed money" for the "digital greenhouse" project, said Sony spokesman Greg Dvorken. Sony does not plan to take an additional presence beyond its plant in Westmoreland County, but it won't rule out such a move in the future, Dvorken said.
The money from Sony and Oki, and possibly from other sources, would help fund a four-person team led by Dennis Yablonsky, a Pittsburgh software executive and Pittsburgh Technology Council board member.
Yablonsky, who now works out of a Downtown office in the old Alcoa Building, led Carnegie Group for almost 12 years before London-based Logica purchased it last fall for $35 million. He left the firm in April.
The state has spent $3.2 million on the project so far, giving the money to Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, according to state officials. The state has not disclosed what the money is being used for, saying that would jeopardize the project.
Cadence, a $1.2 billion company that develops chip software, has acted as the project's chief consultant for nearly two years, requiring secrecy from everyone involved. For example, it asked more than 50 project officials to sign confidentiality agreements.
The project, though, differs significantly from the idea originally proposed by Cadence.
Initially, the plan was to create a 300-acre design center where companies could make smaller and more versatile computer chips by sharing technology, people and ideas. The goal was to create 1,500 jobs, according to documents Cadence produced for the PRA.
Project officials wanted the design center to include Sony, Lucent Technologies, Fore Systems and General Instruments, a maker of cable boxes.
Under the old plan, the companies would have shared space amid scores of offices and labs, townhouses and day-care centers. Ridge would have asked the state Legislature to pass a Uniform Trade Secrets Act so competing companies at the design center could share knowledge and technology freely.
Instead, the Yablonsky team is expected to make the Pittsburgh region a friendlier place for electronics firms and chip designers, hoping to create a new industry cluster from scratch. Using electronic design as its focus, the group will try to grow new local companies and attract companies from outside the region.
"It looks like it will take a little bit longer than originally estimated, but that is the way life often is," said Tom Murrin, dean of Duquesne University's A.J. Palumbo School of Business Administration and chairman of Ridge's Technology 21 initiative.
Central to the project is so-called "system-on-a-chip" design, a new type of design used to develop microchips no larger than a thumbnail yet more versatile than the conventional chips driving computers and televisions.
The role of the universities is to supply local companies with graduates who know how to design these advanced chips. Carnegie Mellon, which already houses several experts in "system-on-a-chip" technology, would not be asked to change its curriculum, but rather tweak what it already offers in the area of chip design.
Project officials hope Yablonsky's team will be able to create lots of jobs. They also hope the commitments of Sony and Oki Electronics will lead to more investments in the future.
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