Intersil announced an alliance with the Georgia Institute of Technology. The announcement includes the opening of a major new development facility and the kick-off of several new programs dedicated to the research and development of advanced power management semiconductor technologies. This alliance involves an on-campus Analogue Processing Centre of Excellence (ACE) and world-class research efforts across multiple Georgia Tech facilities. A keystone of the alliance will be the opening of a new 4,300 square-foot ACE Centre on campus.

At the Georgia Electronic Design Centre (GEDC), Intersil engineers, along with Georgia Tech students and faculty, will focus on creating advanced power management circuit designs. Intersil and the Institute will also engage in joint development through a strategic alliance on advanced process technology development for semiconductors used in high-voltage power management and distribution. The centre will also utilize a technique developed at a Georgia Tech-founded company known as collaborative signal processing that removes performance-limiting impairments such as signal loss, dispersion, skew and noise. This initiative is expected to spawn significant power savings in the electrical grid and tomorrow's data centres.

As energy costs soar and greenhouse gases accumulate, there is an increasing need for higher-voltage, higher-performance semiconductor technologies for power grids worldwide. Intersil and Georgia Tech are creating a strategic alliance to co-develop high-voltage power management circuits using breakthrough process technologies. In addition, Intersil will fund two graduate fellowships in electrical engineering.

The new Analogue Processing Centre of Excellence (ACE) is a spinout of the Georgia Electronic Design Centre and is located in the Centergy One building in Technology Square on the Georgia Tech campus. The facility already employs eight engineers who use state-of-the-art computer-aided design (CAD) tools to do complex analogue systems simulation.